SoftSmiths Helps SPP Participants Meet Demands of Restructured Market

Houston, TX. – July 8, 2004 – SoftSmiths, Inc., a leader in energy transaction management solutions, today announced strong interest for its solutions and services by Southwest Power Pool (SPP) participants to assist them with preparing for the SPP phased restructuring towards a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO). Following the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conditional approval for RTO status, SPP has now moved into increment 2 of Phase 1 and recently organized a Vendor Day, which SoftSmiths attended, to make participants familiar with available solutions.

SoftSmiths today supports the requirements of Phase1 – Increment 1, including:

- Transfer schedules to the settlement system.

- Submit actual meter data for generation and interties to SPP.

- Complete non-binding settlement based on schedules and metering data.

- Integrate with internal accounting and ERP systems

SoftSmiths end-to-end solutions will provide participants the support for the remaining increments of Phase 1, as well as Phase 2 and 3, including functionality for bidding/offering, scheduling, dispatch and settlement of energy and ancillary services.

“Energy transaction management impacts every facet of daily business operations and, ultimately, corporate goals, including increasing revenue growth opportunities, streamlining energy supply and demand processes, and providing unparalleled customer service", said Larry Stone, Director of Product Development at SoftSmiths. “With SoftSmiths Power and SoftSmiths Market – SPP, we allow SPP participants the flexibility to meet the demands of every phase and dimension of the restructuring and evolve their energy transaction management system infrastructure with the market”.

SoftSmiths Market

SoftSmiths’ Market solution allows market participants to interact with Independent System Operators (ISO) and Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO). Based on a flexible and adaptive application framework, SoftSmiths Market facilitates seamless integration with transaction management and scheduling systems as well as easy tailoring to any regional market. SoftSmiths Market provides the high horsepower capabilities needed for accurate shadow settlement, day ahead schedule communications, robust bidding logic, dispatch, LMP and FTR functionality. For Market Participants that interact with multiple regional markets, SoftSmiths Market offers unmatched versatility to connect and communicate through a single application. Additional market interfaces can be easily added to present a very cost-effective solution resulting in a lower total cost of ownership.

SoftSmiths Power

SoftSmiths Power provides Load Forecasting, Resource & Portfolio Management, Real-time and Term Trading, Multi-Commodity Deal Capture, Net Position and ”What-If” Impact Analysis, Volume and Mark-to-Market reporting, P&L reporting, Scheduling, Transmission Reservation and Electronic Tagging. In the Middle Office, SoftSmiths Power capabilities include Operational and resource constraints, Risk Measurement, Controls and Monitoring, while the Back-office provides financial settlement, invoicing, payment tracking and reporting.

NERC 1.7 Compliant Electronic Tagging

Fully integrated with SoftSmiths Power, and allowing automatic creation of tags, the three components of the Electronic Tagging Portal Suite (ETPS) – e-Agent, e-Authority, and e-Approval – enable load serving entities, marketers and transmission providers to create, verify, approve and manage energy delivery interchange transactions.

SoftSmiths EMSLink

SoftSmiths EMSLink provides seamless integration between 3rd party Energy Management Systems and our power scheduling system. EMSLink provides net scheduled interchange data in the required format to EMS/SCADA systems for use in Automatic Generation Control (AGC). Further it complements the capabilities already provided by the power scheduling system to make use of EMS/SCADA information, such as meter data, to perform control area energy accounting functions such as calculation of inadvertent interchange.

About SoftSmiths

SoftSmiths is a leading provider of proven business critical Transaction Management Systems and services for Load Serving Entities, Generation Production Entities, Purchasing Selling Entities, and Transmission Providers who operate in physical markets to sell, purchase, trade, and deliver energy in the most efficient and cost- effective way. SoftSmiths’ seamlessly integrated, scalable, and adaptable solutions provide ready-to-deploy, out-of-the-box functionality that is highly configurable and customizable to meet companies' unique needs. SoftSmiths' proven solutions and in-depth knowledge of the industry's business practices allow its customers to automate manual processes, eliminate redundancies, and increase business visibility across the enterprise to allow faster decision making and more informed decisions, thereby improving profitability, operational efficiencies and cash flow. The company has been successfully delivering e-business solutions to energy service companies since 1997.

SoftSmiths is a registered trademark of SoftSmiths, Inc.

Contact Information:

Softsmiths Inc.
Hugo Stappers
Phone:    713.626.9184
Fax:          713.626.0186
Email:      mkt@softsmiths.com
Website:  www.softsmiths.com

© SoftSmiths 1997-2004 - All Rights Reserved. Legal/Privacy