Improving customer experience for the Energy Contract Volume Aggregation Agent
The Energy Contract Volume Aggregation Agent (ECVAA) is one of the BSC agents that Elexon uses to deliver the Balancing and Settlement Code (BSC). The ECVAA receives notifications of bilateral trades between Trading Parties. It then time-stamps and validates the trade before sending the data to Elexon’s Settlement Administration Agent (SAA). The SAA calculates payments for Parties and performs the daily Settlement Runs.
ECVAA is a critical, 24/7 service for customers that is vital for the continuous operation of Balancing and Settlement. The ECVAA must send an acknowledgement of any trades to Parties after it receives them.
Increase in the number of trades the ECVAA processes
At the start of 2024, an increasing number of users experienced slow performance of ECVAA. This was due to the increase in volume of trade notifications in 2024. The ECVAA received and processed more than 11.5m files in 2024 as compared to under 10m files in 2023.
Elexon took action to protect and maintain the service for all our customers. In 2024, we delivered 18 changes to improve the service and to stabilise the infrastructure. We also carried out several operational improvements to optimise our daily processes.
ECVAA response time improvement
By the end of 2024 we improved the response time for ECVAA to below 2 minutes. This change in performance has directly benefitted several of our most frequent users of ECVAA.
Next steps
In 2025/2026, Elexon’s focus is on deploying a proof of concept for submission of ECVNs through an API. This follows the work of BSC Issue 110 ‘Modernising Energy Contract Volume Notification (ECVN) and Metered Volume Reallocation Notifications (MVRN) submission and acknowledgement processes.’
The API would enable real-time acceptance notification as well as handling large fluctuations in volumes of ECVNs, to modernise, protect and maintain the customer experience. If the proof of concept is successful, then a BSC rule change would be raised to implement the API. Improving our ECVAA technology will ensure that BSC Parties experience an overall improved service.