California Revolutionizes Its Energy Marketplace with Oracle XML DB

The Northern California Power Agency (NCPA), a power consortium that distributes a mix of "green" and conventional electricity, is driving costs out of the California power distribution system using Oracle XML DB and Oracle Database 11g.

Oracle XML DB allows any organization to store and access XML data in an efficient manner. Once the data is stored in Oracle Database 11g, the data becomes immediately available for query and analysis, and for feeding to downstream processes such as verification, billing, and accounting.


NCPA has applied Oracle XML DB to streamline the way it manages large, complex, and highly regulated documents called power settlement files, which act as receipts between the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and companies that supply energy to its grid.

Without its Oracle XML DB-based application, NCPA would need to pay an outside vendor hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for software to review its power settlements, which can run to 100MB or more each. NCPA also avoids the cost of building traditional data tables and scripts to load the data.

NCPA uses Oracle XML DB to handle XML files based on four XML schemas, including an XML configuration file that contains the rules for determining supplier payment from the data. That file can be regularly updated, without needing to modify the XML data itself. NCPA is now its own statement processor and analyzer, and can quickly submit disputes for corrections and collect more of those corrected payments for members on a timely basis.

In doing so, NCPA gained a step on the rest of the industry, as the CAISO will require all of its energy market participants to provide power distribution and billing data as XML files later this year. To assist the industry in making the switch to this technology, NCPA has offered its Oracle XML DB application and findings to other California utilities for free, which will save time and money for all ratepayers.

"NCPA has saved a lot of money for our municipal power customers by using Oracle XML DB. We believe that this type of saving should be available to all energy market participants," said Jim Pope, NCPA general manager.

NCPA has received more than 30 requests in the past few months for its Oracle XML DB solution since making it available as open source code.

Learn more about Oracle XML DB.

Learn more about Oracle Database 11g.