System fits bill in power business

By ADAM GIFFORD

Hawkes Bay and Rotorua power lines company Unison Networks is replacing its billing software as it attempts to better match its charges with the costs of delivering power.

Gentrack replaces a system from Napier Computer Systems which Unison inherited when it was set up.

Unison commercial manager Jon Nichols said the NCS system was showing its age.

"Having doubled in size over the past decade, we wanted a system which was customised for the lines business and had time-of-use billing for larger customers," he said.

The company is installing SAP financials and works management, so considered the time right for a total systems replacement.

Other billing systems considered included Kinetic's PV2, which is trying to expand into the network billing market, and an Equip system from Optimation.

Nichols said the price of the SAP utility billing modules would have been prohibitive for Unison, which gets about $70 million from its lines business.

"Putting an interface between Gentrack and SAP is about an hour's work," he said.

The system, which cost between $300,000 and $500,000, should be live by July, although Gentrack will run both systems in parallel for two months.

Nichols said the billing system would let Unison set the tariff for large industrial customers monthly rather than yearly to better reflect demand, and to give better signals about the cost of assets used to deliver power.

Gentrack division general manager James Docking said the Gentrack for Networks package, made in Auckland by British-owned software house Talgentra, was now used by eight New Zealand lines companies.

Marlborough Lines has just opted to upgrade its Gentrack system after putting the process out to competitive tender, and Contact Energy has bought a Gentrack system to use for its expansion into the Australian retail electricity market.

These sales should help Talgentra's New Zealand revenues, which tumbled last year from $20.3 million to $15.7 million. After-tax profit fell from $4.3 million to $2.95 million.

But Talgentra's global revenue rose during the year to £14 million ($39 million) from £13.1 million, and operating profit was £4.87 million against £4.35 million in 2002.

Sales outside New Zealand of Gentrack and Airport 20/20, the other Talgentra product developed here, are not included in the New Zealand figures.

The company has started to push Gentrack in markets outside New Zealand only over the past year.

It has had wins with Darwin Power and Water in the Northern Territory, MX Energy in Baltimore and Batam Electricity in Indonesia, where Talgentra has partnered major systems integrator PT Mincom.