Case Studies

Data visualisation for market analytics

Drax is the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired power plant in the UK and currently provides enough power to meet seven per cent of the UK’s electricity needs. It has an output capacity of 4,000 megawatts, making it nearly twice the size of the next largest coal-fired power station in the UK.

As part of the Market Eye platform for market intelligence, Drax Power required a series of highly visual dashboards on which to display the latest market analytics, UK power demand, supply and position statistics and the live station generation.  The dashboards were required to feed four large multimedia displays above the trading floor, with the same dashboards viewable from the Market Eye portal.

Multimedia displays and desktop dashboards

The dashboard solution implemented by Rocket Solutions is built on the Microsoft Business Intelligence technology platform and makes full use of the powerful data visualisation capabilities of Dundas Charts.  A suite of 25 dashboards was initially deployed, with the ability to change and publish additional dashboard content through the standard reporting tools.

SQL Server Analysis Services cubes (a key component of the Market Eye data warehouse) support the large volumes of data required to deliver the dashboard analytics, whilst maintaining very high performance.

The multimedia displays have been configured to rotate dynamically through dashboards sets and a live alerting feature jumps the screens directly to an urgent alert as soon as they happen.

The dashboards integrate a graphical trade ticker which scrolls the latest market trades across the screen, along with latest FTSE share prices.

Quick and customisable

The multimedia displays and desktop dashboards provide a powerful way of sharing large volumes of market and power generation data across the organisation.  They can be easily customised and added to by business users without the need for IT involvement or development cycles.