IT support for new business processes connected with the liberalisation of the energy market in Germany

Germany has an unique approach for the deregulation of the energy market: There is no regulation authority in place. With the new “Associations Agreement on Criteria to Determine Use of System Charges for Electric Energy”, signed on December 13^th, 1999, the rules for the liberalized electricity market in Germany were completely re-defined. This document replaced the existing transaction model defined in the first version of the Associations´ Agreement by a point of connection model. This new model specifies that electricity customers have to buy the network access to be able to buy electricity on the free market. The new rules give a central role to distribution network operators. The new business processes coming with this market model are described in this paper and IT solutions to solve the new tasks are shown. The implementation at the Stadtwerke Wurzburg AG is an example how to implement an energy balance management