Rebuilding a national energy datahub without taking it offline 

Estonia’s independent electricity and gas transmission system operator, whose Estfeed Datahub manages 1.5 million metering points and underpins the country’s liberalized energy market. 

Challenge 

Estfeed was originally built by an external firm relying on subcontractors without energy-sector expertise, leaving Elering with massive datasets, dozens of interdependent access rules, and significant technical debt — all while the platform had to keep serving millions of daily energy market transactions. 

Solution 

• Agile, collaborative practices. Moved from quick fixes to Kanban, agile design, and requirements-driven processes; Elering’s in-house architects guide the vision, Srini executes. 

• AI-powered productivity. Windsurf, Gemini, NotebookLM, and ChatGPT speed up development, documentation, and translation across the team. 

• Custom AI testing tool. A Python-based AI testing tool that sped up regression testing by 10–50× — essential given the system’s size and complexity. 

• Domain-specific investment. Unlike prior subcontractors, Srini invested time in understanding energy-sector IT, so every solution fits the regulatory and operational reality. 

Result 

• Estfeed continues to support millions of energy market transactions without disruption, even mid-rebuild. 

• Regression cycles that used to take weeks now complete in a fraction of the time. 

• Elering shifted from fragmented outsourcing to a hand-in-hand in-house + Srini model. 

• New features and fixes ship much faster — critical in the fast-moving European energy market. 

Key takeaway 

Mission-critical national infrastructure can be rebuilt mid-flight — but only with domain investment, AI-paired engineering, and in-house leadership owning the vision.