The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) plays an important role in supporting the industry to deliver a more integrated, secure, and cost effective national energy supply.
AEMO operates the gas and electricity markets in Australia’s eastern and southern states, delivering an array of operational and planning functions.
The Challenge:
AEMO needed a platform to manage notifications to the electricity and gas marketplace about emergency & operational situations, as well as internal IT communications.
Under federal law AEMO is required to notify the electricity and gas marketplace of issues affecting the market and needed a platform that could manage this process for emergency and operational situations, ultimately providing an integral part of AEMO’s market notification system.
AEMO also needed a solution that could manage the very high volume of messaging required to manage its internal IT services.
The Solution:
The Whispir Platform has been implemented to action the send out of important information from energy suppliers and other stakeholders - plus heavy daily usage for automated internal IT service management.
Cloud-hosted platform ensures an uninterrupted supply of information and communication between stakeholders
Targeted messages can be sent simultaneously via SMS and email and may be used to pass information to and from system operators through to energy bodies, government, and in some cases, emergency services
AEMO pipes directly into the Whispir network, which delivers an ultra-resilient connection to ensure messages can be rapidly delivered to quickly resolve any issues and minimise potential risk
Instant teleconference capability, with SMS notification messages sent to stakeholders prior to a call. If a message is not delivered, it is automatically retried and escalated according to a defined set of business rules
The Benefits:
Unmatched capability for rapid response, enhanced situational awareness, and increased resilience in a complex operating environment.
AEMO has to follow protocols for various levels of threat or incident, and relies on the Whispir Platform to communicate to relevant stakeholders based on immediacy and seriousness. The platform facilitates the rapid communication required to ensure the continuity of service delivery.
Messages generated by AEMO inform people of situations as they occur, advising what exactly is going on and just as importantly what they should be prepared for. The platform can be used to quickly mobilize key stakeholders, with the platform’s two-way communications completely auditable and trackable.
With Whispir’s cloud based platform AEMO is not reliant on their own existing hardware/IT systems, which means the platform is accessible from any location.
As a result of efforts to improve inter-agency communication for bushfire safety, AEMO now also sits at the State Control Centre and is called in on high risk days and total fire bans to act as a subject matter expert for electricity transmission.
The Whispir platform excels at delivering streamlined communication processes for organisations. By running on Amazon Web Services, our clients go from data to action. Whispir is enhanced to deliver even more intelligent workflows without the need to write any additional code or invest in additional technical labor.
- AEMO spokesperson
“Some of our distribution businesses will give us a ‘heads up’ and say that there’s a particular terminal station or substation that’s got assets that are hot, based on load and hot weather ... all those comms are sent to and from Whispir.”
