Transpower New Zealand wins 2024 Red Hat Innovation Award

Transpower New Zealand, the country's national electricity grid owner and operator, has been declared a winner of the 2024 Red Hat Innovation Awards. The announcement was recently made at the Red Hat Summit 2024, a leading gathering for IT professionals seeking knowledge, collaboration, and innovation on technologies across the board. The award, run by open source solutions provider Red Hat, recognises customers and partners for their imaginative and innovative use of the company's solutions.

The Red Hat Innovation Awards have been recognising the technological achievements of Red Hat customers globally since 2006. The awards spotlight those who have tackled problems with creativity, in turn creating a significant positive impact within the business realm and wider society. Each year, a panel of judges whittles down a large pool of worldwide nominees to just four winners. This year, Transpower New Zealand shares the distinction with Banco da Amazonia, Eusko Jaularitzaren Informatika Elkartea (EJIE), and Informationstechnikzentrum Bund (Capgemini).

Transpower's winning project revolved around the modernisation of its Market System. The agenda involved replacing end-of-life products, simplifying business logic, introducing new capabilities, and maintaining a resilient, flexible, and cost-effective system. Red Hat solutions such as Red Hat Fuse, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Red Hat OpenShift were crucial to the success of the project. The result was a modernised Market System that not only reduced complexity and cost, improved reliability, and bolstered support for real-time pricing but also saved the company around NZ$50 million compared to creating a new system. The adoption of Red Hat technologies also led to standardisation, automation, and innovation within the company, enabling collaborative development and DevOps practices, and supporting Transpower's journey towards electrification and adapting to the changing energy landscape.

Acknowledging the honour, Enzo Compagnoni, Regional Vice President and General Manager, A/NZ, Red Hat, said, "It's inspiring to see Red Hat customers and partners continue to push the boundaries of innovation by using open source solutions to solve complex business challenges in increasingly unique and innovative ways. It's great to see a customer from the ANZ region, Transpower New Zealand, win this award. Being New Zealand's national electricity grid operator, Transpower impacts so many across the country. We're proud to play a role in helping modernise their critical market system infrastructure."

Arosha Aluwihare, Head of Application Services, Information Services and Technology, Transpower New Zealand, remarked, "Adopting commercially backed open-source software offered us cost-effective fit-for-purpose and fully supported software solutions. It provided us with technology that focussed on development first. This gave us the technical agility to attract and retain the talent we required. Red Hat worked with our teams to troubleshoot technical issues. This award is a testament to the collaboration and hard work of all the teams involved."