Erex Exchange receives data from meters installed on electric trains — and secures the validity of the data — before allocating and distributing it to infrastructure managers and train operators, according to national and international requirements. To better understand this process of exchange, we spoke with Bjørn Lysne, Exchange Responsible at Eress. 

 

“Exchange, in brief, is an international service which ensures that the energy data that is metered — or measured — on each train is available for use in billing. This means that all parties who would like to invoice based on metered data can do so. Exchange is essentially the crossroads for this metered data,” says Mr. Lysne.

 

“We started with this about twelve years ago, handling multiple countries that had to send their metered data to one another. So, each country needed to communicate with other countries — to get the necessary data — in order to bill the responsible train operators for their energy consumption.” 

 

He continues, “We were the first movers of this, but it was out of necessity that we started. Having every meter or system sending data to everyone in an endless variety of special interfaces is not a good way to do it, especially when you consider the lack of efficiency, the potential risks involved, and the technology nightmare it creates. We decided that the best approach was to put a central crossroad — Erex Exchange — in the middle, which would then connect the different metering and settlement systems. This allowed them to easily and securely receive the data and use it for billing purposes. That is the basis for how exchange came to be and why it has grown as big as it is today.”

 

“The difference between the regular energy markets and railway energy markets is that the consumer in the regular energy market is not moving around. Trains, on the other hand, are in motion most of the time — crossing borders into different countries, different grid areas, etc. This is why it is important to have intelligent systems that can handle the values quickly and allocate and export them directly to the correct receiver.”

 

The full version of this article can be found in Eress Magazine 2020