Gestore del Mercato Elettrico (GME, Rome, Italy), the Italian power exchange, has selected Excelergy Corp. (Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.) to provide the operating software to run Italy's newly competitive power exchange. The multimillion-dollar agreement — awarded to a consortium that includes Excelergy, Italian systems integrator Elsag SpA (Genoa, Italy) and IT consultant Getronics (Amsterdam) — was made in advance of the October 2002 opening of the new competitive market.

GME is implementing a program that will introduce competition to the provision of electricity in Italy through a national power exchange. The power exchange initially will open to generators, distributors and wholesalers and will extend to eligible customers over time. The power exchange will create day-ahead, intra-day, reserve and balancing markets to facilitate competition and lower energy prices while maintaining a reliable and stable power grid.

Elsag will provide project management and systems integration and security services for the phased implementation, and Getronics will provide all hardware systems.

Once operational in Italy, Excelergy's product suite will manage the power bidding process among energy generators, distributors, importers, wholesalers and eligible customers; establish the market clearing price; schedule the delivery of power; and settle market operations.

Serving more than 57 million people, the Italian power market will manage a capacity of more than 72,000 MW of electricity from about 1400 generation facilities and 9700 km (6027 miles) of transmission lines. The Italian power market also interconnects with its counterpart systems in France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Greece.
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