The Challenge
Allegheny Power distributes electricity to customers from 55 service centers across Pennsylvania and four surrounding states. The energy company approached Soleil Technologies™ with the vision of creating a data exchange to improve the flow of information between their utility operations, its customers, and the Pennsylvania Utility Commission (PUC). The system would emphasize the following:

Create a web-based data exchange for electricity traders and operation personnel associated with Allegheny Power

Display data that compares electricity load actual values versus load forecasts in real-time, on-demand, and in a wide variety of formats

Integrate legacy data from disparate systems across a wide geographic area

Provide real-time event messaging capabilities to give communication capabilities to the utility

Build the entire application from product concept to launch in eight weeks

The Soleil Solution™
Soleil™ created a data exchange to support the real-time reporting needs of Allegheny Power. Use of the site is to restricted registered users and includes user registration and authentication procedures. The system's architecture considers all aspects of security in relation to the web server and the internal Allegheny Power network. Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) technology was used in conjunction with state-of-the-art graphing software to display data in robust graphical formats. An easy-to-use event messaging system provides a secure system to post on-demand communiqués to customers. Soleil's proprietary component library of pre-written business objects significantly reduced time-to-market. Soleil quickly configured objects for user registration, login, and navigation that exactly matched Allegheny Power's business needs.

The Results
Completed in December 2000, Soleil's component technology comprises 35% of the software. Soleil™ was credited with meeting the firm's time-to-market needs. A fully functioning software application was delivered to Allegheny Power on time and under budget in the desired eight-week timeframe.