When Fortum Oslo Varme AS was established in 2017, with Oslo Municipality and Fortum each owning 50 percent, the new company took over the applications and systems for operating Norway’s largest district heating business from Hafslund. A new IT strategy was implemented, and together with Computas, Fortum Oslo Varme gained increased control and significant process improvements in a short time.

Fortum Oslo Varme produces and sells district heating in Oslo and the surrounding area. As the largest district heating operator in Norway, the company accounts for over a third of all district heating produced in the country. After integrating into the Fortum Group, it didn’t take long before the need arose to replace and modernize the application portfolio with simpler and more efficient solutions. Some Hafslund systems could be phased out by the company itself and replaced with Fortum’s existing solutions, while other systems had to be created from scratch.

Fortum Oslo Varme therefore established its own IT strategy for its district heating business in Norway, and they engaged Computas to assist in modernizing an old, and partially outdated, application portfolio for meter readings and energy consumption collection.

“The applications we used for collecting consumption data from district heating customers were built on old technology, and the applications communicated little with each other. We therefore decided to modernize our application portfolio and developed a pure cloud-based strategy and architecture for this work”, says Jonny Lotten, Head of IT at Fortum Oslo Varme, and adds: “Our strategy was to replace the old applications with a completely new, in-house developed solution, which was specifically tailored to our needs. We brought in development resources and architecture expertise from Computas to assist us in realizing this work.”

The goal was clear; to simplify, automate and streamline the work processes around meter reading collection (MVI). Collecting correct meter readings and sending these to customer and billing systems is critical to Fortum Oslo Varme’s operations and their ability to ensure necessary maintenance.

“In Oslo and the surrounding area, Fortum Oslo Varme has just under 6,000 meters. Since the summer of 2019, there has been full speed on this project, both from our side and in the MVI team at Fortum”, says Nina Trettenes, customer manager at Computas.

New System Secures Invoice Base of NOK 1.5 Billion

On November 5, 2020, the new MVI system went live. It thus took over as the new primary system for collecting and processing meter readings from the company’s heat meters at business customers and condominiums. The system is integrated with a good handful of existing systems at Fortum for equipment handling, production optimization, billing, and customer portal, among other things. The solution is responsible for generating billing data of approximately 1.5 billion kroner per year, and it places very high demands on accurate consumption data and correct handling of errors and missing values.

“Now we have a state-of-the-art, cloud-based platform. Technologically speaking, it will give us entirely new opportunities to utilize the data we collect, including in terms of automation, process improvements, analyses, and asset maintenance”, says Lotten.

From Passenger to Driver

Specifically, Fortum Oslo Varme has experienced two positive effects so far:

• Employees have gained a much better overview of any errors and deficiencies because the data is now available in a common interface and is much easier to understand. Among the applications Computas assisted in creating was an intuitive dashboard that allows all employees to access the same information. Previously, only a few people could access and obtain an overview of data quality and where any errors were located. In addition, with the current solution, a daily update is automatically generated in the dashboard, whereas previously, employees had to manually extract long and complex reports in Excel a couple of times a month. In other words, the new solution saves Fortum’s professionals from a large amount of manual and repetitive work.

• Increased quality of consumption data collection. This means that Fortum can detect any deviations in meter readings and in the technical infrastructure more quickly. They retrieve meter readings from meters installed at their customers’ premises, and the increased quality means that the company can more quickly detect errors in technical components and infrastructure.

Having all employees view the same data in a common dashboard is invaluable. “The data is updated continuously, and it is easy to understand, readily accessible, and of high quality. This allows us to act faster and be proactive in a completely different way than before,” says Anna Medle, head of the metering department at Fortum Oslo Varme.

The customer manager at Computas is very pleased with how seamlessly the transition from old to new systems has gone. “The MVI system that we have developed has run in parallel with the old system for an extended period, and together with the technical department at Fortum Oslo Varme, the transition has gone excellently. Not a single A or B error has been detected,” Trettenes concludes proudly.

The Computas team that has worked with Fortum Oslo Varme is now moving into a further development phase and is working to define and prioritize new functionalities and upgrades to the MVI system.