Settlements pre-production release FAQs

The Settlements pre-production environment will be available to participants from 22 March 2021. AEMO will provide instructions for connecting to this environment on the Participant testing web page.

However, participants who already have access to this environment can log into the web portal and new API service using the same username and password.

If a participant does not currently have access to AEMO’s pre-production environment, or does not know their password, they should contact their organisation’s MSATS Participant Administrator.

From 22 March 2021, the Settlements platform will be available in pre-production and will reflect the functionality that will go-live on 17 May 2021, which will be in 30-minute mode. Key changes include:

• New APIs to access prudential information, and Settlements direct
• New statement layout and improved GST details
• Updated Settlement Reconciliation (SR) report to show total Distribution Metered Energy (DME) and Unaccounted for Energy Allocation (UFEA) for participants.

Please refer to the Functional Deployment Matrix for a full list of the 5MS and GS capabilities that will be available in AEMO’s pre-production environment.

This data was refreshed from the production environment in late October 2020.

It is an opportunity for participants to familiarise themselves with the new invoice and reports and verify compatibility with their internal systems, before these changes are released into production on 17 May 2021.

No, AEMO does not co-ordinate industry testing activities as it is an opportunity for participants to test their organisation’s changes with AEMO’s market systems in readiness for the production release.

However, AEMO will generate three settlement runs and participants can choose if they wish to review the output or wait and simply receive it for the first time at go-live.

The three settlement runs will be generated and made available on:

• 23 March for Settlement week TBA
• 26March for Settlement week TBA
• 30 March for Settlement week TBA

Post deployment of the new Retail solution, a further three settlement runs will be generated.

Support for the pre-production environment is available during business hours and will be provided through AEMO’s Support Hub:

1. Online (preferred): https://www.aemo.com.au/Contact-us.
2. Phone: 1300 236 600

While there are no Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the pre-production environment, AEMO will make best efforts to respond as soon as possible.

There will be an outage to the Settlements pre-production systems from Friday 19 March at 1200hrs (afternoon) to Sunday 21 March at 1700hrs. During this time the existing Settlements pre-production systems will be unavailable. However, there will be no impact to the Settlements production systems or the Bidding & Dispatch pre-production or production systems. 

System performance in pre-production is not guaranteed and may not be as good as the performance in production. However, Support Hub will be available to assist participants with any issues relating to this environment.

All issues and defects will be raised by Support Hub who will triage and address them according to their priority. The 5MS program will send participants an email each Friday detailing any known issues or defects during that week.

In a nutshell, Industry testing is a participant led activity and can take place at any time once the functionality is available in the selected environment, whereas Market Trials is AEMO led and is scheduled for a specific period.

Industry testing allows participants to test the functionality of their organisation’s systems with AEMO’s market systems to ensure connectivity and expected system behaviour.

Market Trials will consist of the coordinated multi-party end-to-end testing of business process scenarios, which are developed by AEMO. 

The strategy for each capability release has been developed in consultation with Industry and is documented in the Industry Test and Market Trial Strategy.