The Data Journey - A Holistic View

The Foundation

When embarking on the nodal power markets data journey, it is vital to take time to build a solid foundation.  Nodal markets produce huge quantities of data - for instance, Yes Energy alone collects over 5 billion rows of data every month - and in order for your business to derive maximum value, key decision makers must understand the data.  As your company embarks on the Exploring Digital stage within nodal power markets, it is helpful to begin exploring the data with a user interface tool.  Visualizing the data and all of the variables and components that impact market prices will help inform solid trading and operational strategies and analyses that will optimize your performance within the markets.  

Application Programming Interfaces

Once your company is grounded in nodal market data, how do you know when to take the next step?  It might be time to progress if: 

• You are performing well and are ready to enter new trading regions

•  Your trading volume and associated required analysis exceeds the capabilities of your current solution

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are a great technology to leverage next as your business progresses along the journey.  APIs are the perfect entree to machine learning, AI solutions, and automation in your processes and analyses.  You can build applications with APIs since they allow for large data pulls.  They are also designed according to specific standards, making them easy to access and understand for a variety of users.

Dive into the Lake, Fly up to the Cloud

APIs do have some limitations, so as your company approaches the Being Digital Phase, you may consider diving into Data Lakes or flying to the Cloud Warehouses.  Indications that your business is ready to progress to this stage include: 

• The need to fuel your data analytics with big data quickly and throttle free 

• Participation in multiple ISOs and/or trading multiple products

• A large volume of traders and employees with data-driven workflows

At this stage, both Data Lakes and Cloud Data Warehouses are suited to power your business and bring you to the cutting edge of the latest technologies and analytics.  They will allow your team to crunch billions and billions of rows of data, infinitely scale their analyses and processes, and bring the newest and most skilled talent straight to your doorstep.  There are some considerations to make when deciding between these solutions.  Check out our most recent post to learn more about the aspects to consider when deciding on which technology to go forwards with.

Wherever you are on your data transformation journey, Yes Energy will meet you where you are, then take you where you want to go.  If you’re interested in learning more about the Big Data and Digital Transformation journey and how to gain insight along the way, register for our YesData Insight event, Unlocking Big Data Insights, on Thursday, June 24th, 2021!

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