Dutch energy sector formally approves AS4 Energy Market Profile
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The Dutch energy sector has formally approved a specification of AS4 as communication protocol in the Dutch national energy market.
The “AS4 Energiemarkt Profiel” (AS4 Energy Market Profile) can now be used and distributed.
The Dutch energy sector develops its own market processes under the supervision of the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM). The non-profit association NEDU plays a central role in the development and implementation of market processes and is a platform that connects the roles of various market operators. It covers both gas and electricity and both wholesale, retail and metering processes. The NEDU Technical Committee is assigned to prepare the implementation of the profile, where applicable.
In the words of Arthur van Wylick, President of NEDU:
“NEDU considers harmonisation of (the national) standards for data-exchange to be an important goal in the evolution of the energy market. With the introduction of the “AS4 Energy Market profile” we aim to pro-actively reduce complexity for all parties in data-exchange, particularly our members, by introducing a single document based data exchange protocol. The AS4 Energy Market profile is based on the European e-Delivery standards and is set up in line with the ENTSO-G AS4 Profile, already in use in the Netherlands.
NEDU foresees a similar development on the European level of international energy market standards, and we are convinced that introducing this profile is a future-proof step towards national and international standardisation.”
AS4 (Applicability Statement 4) is the message exchange protocol promoted by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eDelivery Building Block.
“AS4 Energiemarkt Profiel” is closely based on the CEF eDelivery AS4, including the Four Corner Enhancement and Pull enhancements.
AS4 is a Conformance Profile of the OASIS ebMS 3.0 specification. AS4 is typically used for the secure and reliable exchange of documents, attachments to these documents and data in general, and can be used in Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Administration (B2A) and Administration-to-Administration (A2A) exchange contexts. AS4 can be used in virtually every sector or business domain.
In 2015, AS4 was chosen by the EU Member States, participating in the e-SENS Large Scale Pilot, as the primary protocol for B2B, B2A and A2A message exchange going forward.
The profile was written in Dutch, is also available in English.