NIPSCO goes live with GridAmerica-to-MISO Interface

Houston, TX. – October 7, 2003 – Today, SoftSmiths announced that Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), a Nisource company and the second largest electric distribution company in Indiana, has gone live with SoftSmiths' GridAmerica-to-MISO interface, using it to automatically transmit schedule approval decisions and load loss schedule information into SoftSmiths’ e-Wheel transmission scheduling application. SoftSmiths delivers critical e-Business solutions and services that enable energy industry participants to enhance profitability and reliability in the competitive marketplace.

The new application builds on and extends an existing implementation of e-Wheel, and meets NIPSCO's requirement for a seamlessly integrated solution, leveraging the e-Wheel application to display the load loss schedule information in conjunction with all other schedules in interchange checkout screens, as well as transparently sending schedule approval or refusal decisions to MISO's ESS system.

The GridAmerica interface application is a member of SoftSmiths' e-Market Product Suite, enabling market participants, through a single application solution, to connect and communicate transaction requests from the transaction management system to any number of markets based on the standard market design model. e-Market provides the functionality for Bidding, Scheduling, Dispatch, FTR tracking and Settlement activities between the market participant and Regional Transmission Organization.

e-Wheel is designed for Transmission Providers, Control Area Operators, and RTO's who face an increasingly diverse customer service base and require cutting-edge technology to accommodate transaction rates in the hundreds of thousands. SoftSmiths' e-Wheel Suite provides just that - a flexible, scalable business technology solution, seamlessly integrating Scheduling, Transmission Services, ATC Management, Interchange Checkout, EMS integration, Accounting and Reporting - so that Transmission Providers can stay on top in the changing business environment. The e-Wheel suite also provides NIPSCO with the NERC 1.7 compliant e-Authority and e-Approval applications.

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

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