Automation & Billing for the Energy Sector

Architecting Scalable Automation and Billing Systems in the Energy Sector

Client: Largest Energy company in Europe

Project Scope: Billing stream architecture, flow automation between Salesforce and PowerCloud, end-to-end QA automation

Engagement Duration: 4 years

Tech Stack: Selenium, Playwright, Java, Spring Boot, GitLab, JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber

Roles: Solutions Architect, Automation QA Engineers

The Context

As one of Europe’s largest utility providers, our client needed to consolidate and modernize core business processes to keep pace with evolving regulatory demands, rising user expectations, and complex billing requirements. Their legacy testing practices and billing architecture were reaching critical complexity. From a systems architecture perspective, the main challenge was aligning automation, billing, and data integration across multiple platforms—including Salesforce and PowerCloud—without disrupting production-grade systems or compromising on security and compliance.

Architectural Goals

Our objective was twofold:

• Build a flexible automation architecture that supports frequent releases and rigorous testing without bottlenecks.
• Define and implement the Power2Cash billing stream—from conceptual architecture through to pipeline integration and automation validation.

We needed to unify QA and billing logic under scalable frameworks, support CI/CD pipelines, and increase the speed of both testing and system rollouts.

Automation Architecture & Delivery Strategy

We began by evolving the pre-existing testing framework. From an architectural standpoint, we:

• Rebuilt the automation layer with Selenium WebDriver and Java to allow for scalable execution and deeper integration with release workflows.
• Migrated from JUnit to TestNG, which gave us enhanced control over test suite execution and parallelization—crucial for running tests across multiple environments (SIT and pre-production).
• Built release pipelines in GitLab, separating daily SIT from scheduled release validation workflows. This allowed our development and QA cycles to operate asynchronously while maintaining traceability.
• Implemented a structured reporting engine for pipeline test runs, exposing execution time, success rate, and trace logs.

Later in the engagement, we extended the architecture with Playwright for front-end testing, keeping the framework modular and compatible with new UI components introduced in parallel by Client teams.

Billing System Overhaul: Designing ‘Power2Cash’

As our client developed a new billing solution in-house, we were tasked with integrating this into the broader automation and system architecture. We designed and implemented:

• The Power2Cash stream—an architecture covering billing, SEPA payments, and background jobs.
• Automation integration hooks that validated the billing engine in sync with business logic and test pipelines.
• A tooling layer for contract generation and framework improvements to increase contract preparation accuracy.
• A bonus logic system, modularly built to plug into the billing engine and tested under various load scenarios.
• Data preparation utilities to support automated test environments and streamline test setup time.

This ensured full test coverage for newly defined business rules without slowing down development velocity.

Collaboration Model

We worked in close coordination with our client’s architects and internal dev teams. Our workflow involved receiving high-level test cases, transforming them into automated suites, and validating each case against the system through manual triggers and automated CI pipelines. The modular nature of our frameworks allowed for frequent hand-offs and seamless integration with other internal systems.

Results & Impact

• Significant reduction in release preparation time, with automation covering hundreds of test cases across different flows.
• Systematized billing logic, modular enough to support new billing models and loyalty schemes.
• Stable QA pipelines that helped this client maintain compliance and readiness for external audits.
• Improved test reliability and performance, enabling more confident and frequent releases.

As a Solutions Architect, the value I see in this project lies in how deeply aligned our architecture became with both the operational and strategic goals of the client. We didn’t just deliver tests—we delivered systems that think ahead, scale naturally, and leave room for innovation and upgrades.

Ready to architect scalable, compliant, automation-first solutions in energy or fintech?

Let’s talk about how OceanoBe can build what’s next for your platform.