December 31, 2024
From spreadsheet chaos to scalable automation, a small data team delivers big impact across Australia’s energy grid.
“It’s not about replacing people — it’s about removing pain. Mage Pro helped us do exactly that.”
— Kirk Mower, Data Manager, Solstice Energy
At a glance
📍 Company | Solstice Energy (Tasmania, Australia) |
|---|---|
🧑💻 Team size | 3-person data team |
⚡ Services | Natural gas distribution & energy retail |
🚀 Solution | Migrated from open source to Mage Pro |
💰 Outcome | Automated monthly reporting & cut 4 contractor roles |
🛠 Stack | Mage Pro + Snowflake + Power BI |
The Challenge
Too much Excel. Not enough time.
Solstice Energy manages Tasmania’s natural gas distribution network and retails electricity and gas across Australia. But for years, their monthly reporting relied on a massive Excel workbook—what the team called their “calculation bible.”
Every month, four contractors would manually copy, paste, and transform data to meet regulatory reporting requirements. It was slow, stressful, and fragile.
“You’re reporting to the market, so every column matters. One mistake could send the wrong data to regulators,” said Mower.
With a small data team and growing responsibilities, Solstice needed a better way to orchestrate and automate its data workflows—without the overhead of managing infrastructure or hiring a fleet of engineers.
The Solution
Going from open source to fully managed.
Kirk Mower had already been running open source Mage on AWS—but as the team prepared to migrate cloud accounts, the cost of maintaining ECS deployments and GitHub CI/CD pipelines became clear.
Rather than rebuild everything, they made the switch to Mage Pro—a fully managed, cloud-native data orchestration platform.
“We cloned our code into a new repo, removed the infra config, and connected it to Mage Pro. The whole migration took just a few days,” Mower said.
Mage Pro’s visual, block-based pipeline model allowed even junior team members to contribute confidently, combining SQL, Python, and external APIs in an intuitive way.
The Results
From duct tape to data magic.
With Mage Pro, Solstice Energy transformed its reporting workflows and unlocked new capabilities:
✅ Automation replaced contractors
What once required four external contractors is now fully automated—saving time, cost, and risk.
✅ Junior-friendly workflows
Mage’s modular design helps the team onboard faster and work more independently.
✅ Infrastructure eliminated
No more Docker, ECS, IAM, or DevOps overhead—just pipelines that run.
✅ Flexibility, not lock-in
Mage integrates with Snowflake today—but gives Solstice the freedom to switch tools in the future.
“Mage lets us choose the best engine for the job. We’re not stuck in anyone’s ecosystem.”
And unlike other platforms, Mage Pro delivered all this without breaking the budget.
“The uplifted cost of going Pro? An accounting error.”
Why Mage?
One platform. Endless possibilities.
Kirk had tried everything from Airflow to DBT to Fivetran. But each came with tradeoffs—whether it was complexity, cost, or lack of visibility.
Mage Pro offered something better: a maintainable, componentized approach to data orchestration that actually worked for a small, ambitious team.
“It’s easy to use, easy to scale, and it doesn’t care which tools you use. That’s real freedom.”
What's Next?
Scaling smarter across Australia.
With core pipelines humming, Solstice is exploring new use cases in machine learning, expanding analytics, and sharing lessons at industry events. What started as a workaround for Excel pain has evolved into a foundation for long-term agility.
Mage Pro didn’t just help them modernize their workflows—it helped them modernize how their team thinks about what’s possible.
