Settlement Transaction Communication

Upon completion of calculations (or approval of calculations if the approval is required), settlement transaction results can be exported and sent to market participants This is done via an outbound communication created by the Create Settlement Transaction Outbound Communication algorithm. This communication is responsible for deriving and gathering the appropriate data to send to the market participant and creating and sending an outbound message.

There are two many ways in which settlement transactions are sent:

  • Contract: Sending by contract involves sending the results of a settlement transaction to a recipient (such as an ISO) using an identifier from the market contract.
  • Identifier: Sending by identifier involves sending the results of a settlement transaction to a recipient using an identifier from the market participant.

Communication Types

The type of outbound communication created is based on the Outbound Communication Type defined on the settlement transaction’s settlement subscription type. Communication types define the following about settlement transaction outbound communications:

  • Communication Flow: The direction of communications based on this type (outbound or inbound).
  • Suppress Zeros: Designates whether or not data should be sent for a service quantity of 0.
  • Message Generation Method: Specifics if messages be sent as a single message to the market or broken down to one message per Identifier/Contract.
  • External Communication Type: Defines whether the communication type is “Settlement by Contract” or “Settlement by Identifier”.
  • Export Data Identification: Defines combinations of UOM/TOU/SQI that represent the final outcome of the settlement transaction to be passed to the market
  • Reconciliation: Defines the appropriate identifier or contract to include in the data sent to the market participant:
    • Contract Reconciliation: defines the appropriate identifier for the market contract associated with the service quantity. Used when sending data by contract.
    • Identifier Reconciliation: Defines the characteristic type for the market participant used to retrieve the appropriate identifier. Used when sending data by identifier.
  • Exception Handling: Defines how exceptions are handled, including To Do Type and Role, Retry Frequency, and the maximum number of times the system will retry to process the communication

Retrieving Service Quantities

Once created, the outbound communication retrieves a list of service quantities for the settlement transaction and inserts the details into the Settlement Transaction Details list. The specifics of how this is done is based on whether the settlement transaction is sent by contract or by identifier.

Send Settlement Transaction By Contract

Sending data by contract uses outbound communications based on the Send Settlement Transaction by Contract business object. The Retrieve Settlement Transaction SQs Contract algorithm retrieves the list of service quantities that match the UOM/TOU/SQI combination defined on the communication type, and for each service quantity found that has a market contract it will retrieve the identifier for that contract and populate the appropriate details into the Settlement Transaction Details list. The algorithm processes the entire service quantity result set even if it cannot find an identifier for a given contract. This way a user can see all identifier resolution errors at once (instead of needing to fix them one by one to see the next error).

Send Settlement Transaction By Identifier

Sending data by identifier uses outbound communications based on the Send Settlement Transaction by Identifier business object. The Retrieve Settlement Transaction SQs for Identifier algorithm extracts the market participant from the attributes associated to the service quantity’s measuring component. The measuring components that will be associated to the service quantity in this instance will be aggregation measuring components that hold a list of dimensions that incudes a market participant. The algorithm then retrieves the list of service quantities that match the UOM/TOU/SQI combination defined on the communication type and for each service quantity found that has a measuring component, it retrieves the measuring component’s market participant and then retrieve the identifier for that market participant and populate the appropriate details into the Settlement Transaction Details list. The algorithm processes the entire service quantity result set even if it cannot find a market participant or an identifier for a given market participant. This way a user can see all identifier resolution errors at once (instead of needing to fix them one by one to see the next error).