ECOES

2025-11-29

In the previous post I wrote that each supply has an LLFC, or to be more precise, each MPAN has an LLFC, one for import and one for export if the supply has an export MPAN. The electricity industry view of all electricity supplies and their characteristics (such has LLFC) is stored in a database called ECOES. Any non-domestic customer can sign up to ECOES and ask to be granted visibility of the MPANs for which they're a customer.

There's a web interface to the database which is useful for doing one-off lookups, but the really useful thing is the CSV download of all your supplies and their characteristics. Here is the info you get on each MPAN:

The industry is undergoing a transition to the DIP (Data Integration Platform) and you can see this beginning to be introduced into ECOES, with the Distributor Dip Id column showing the new DIP id, rather than the old Market Participant Id. The other columns are still on the old system though. The ISD (Industry Standing Data) replaces the old Market Domain Data, recasting its contents in DIP form. The ISD contains a mapping between the old and new systems, which is helpful for dealing with the two systems.

Stack Of Papers

As a programmer of the Chellow system, I'm having to make sure that we handle the transition as gracefully as possible. I've opted for a gradual morphing of old to new, rather than a big bang approach. The full zipped ISD file comes to over 400 MB, although that does included the line loss factors.

Anyway, the ECOES data is incredibly useful for checking the information held in Chellow against the industry information. Any discrepancies are flagged up for investigation. In a similar way to bill checking, if there's a difference then either Chellow is wrong or the industry is wrong or both!

Finally, in the ECOES CSV output, the following headings are present, but without any data. They are waiting for the transition to the DIP.

See you next time! ✨