Building a digital spine to facilitate the sharing and clever usage of energy data
If we’re going to negotiate the transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewables, we’re going to need to change a whole bunch of things. One of those things is how we capture, share, enrich and build on top of the data about usage, capacity and stability of the grid and all the component energy sources and sinks.
Australia contemplates a data exchange hub
In October 2023, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) wrapped up a three year trial of a “proof-of-concept two-sided arrangement that enables efficient & secure coordination of aggregated distributed energy resources, and facilitates the delivery of both wholesale and local network services at the grid edge” (Project EDGE which is compellingly and extensively documented on the AEMO website for those curious to dive deeper).
This ‘efficient and secure coordination’ is a big deal for a country as naturally blessed as Australia with the raw inputs for renewable energy (sun and wind) but with a geographically distributed population spread over a vast landmass with an aging grid designed and built in the days of one way energy transfers (big power plants → consumers).
According to Project EDGE, one of the key pieces required for the practical operation of a flexible and competitive energy market built on distributed energy resources (solar panels, home batteries, community batteries, EVs, etc) is a ‘scalable data exchange between multiple industry actors’.
Makes complete sense to me. Yes please, with bells on and preferably a decade ago.
However, while anyone who has worked in data at even ‘large enterprise scale’ will quail at the overwhelming complexity of point-to-point integration at ‘country wide grid scale’, they will likely ruefully agree that a data exchange hub will be no walk in the park either.
Wouldn’t it be great to learn from the failures and successes of others? Turns out Australia might have that luxury, if we turn our eyes to the UK who published their own intent to investigate a substantively similar ‘digital spine’ project in Jan 2022.
Current status of the UK data exchange thinking
Sadly the trail runs cold at the press release announcing the partners in the successful bid for this digital spine investigation work: Arup, Catapult Energy Systems and the University of Bath. These great folk won the tender for a six month, £190k feasibility study. In March 2023.
To meet target of net zero by 2050, the UK needs a smart, flexible electricity system underpinned by data and digitalisation. The ability to exchange data will be a fundamental feature of a digitalised energy system with new software, systems, and platforms emerging as smart technologies make use of low carbon energy. The Energy Digitalisation Taskforce report describes a ‘digital spine’ as a ‘thin layer of interaction and interoperability across all players which enables a minimal layer of operation critical data to be ingested, standardised, and shared in near-real time.’
Arup, in partnership with Energy Systems Catapult and the University of Bath, will carry out a 6-month feasibility study to assess the feasibility of a ‘digital spine’ concept for the energy system. This work aims to establish the needs case for an energy system ‘digital spine’ and its benefits to establishing a smart, flexible, decarbonised energy system. The study also aims to understand the potential scope of an energy system ‘digital spine’, the data infrastructure required to deliver it, and the costs of scope options.
Some reasonably persistent searching turns up … nada in terms of outcomes of the study so far. It’s a bit of a cliff hanger! This stuff is both fascinating and critical though so I shall be keeping an eye on developments. Consider this part of the story as very much to be continued.
What can we learn from the past to reduce friction in the race towards a data enabled net zero?
I’m a very vocal believer in the power of data to solve a lot of important problems but big, nation-spanning projects do tend to send nervous shivers down my spine. I’m not close to the UK market but at least in Australia, we’ve had a few of them before and it is instructive to reflect on those and figure out what we might do the same and differently this time around. (Because let’s face it, it could hardly be more urgent.) I’m thinking in particular of the My Health Record and the Consumer Data Right.
With My Health Record, the Aussie take on a digital health record (sorely needed to assist in bringing down health costs through more coordinated management of chronic disease), adoption unforunately stayed really low (even after the Covid vaccination record bump). In retrospect, among other challenges, we didn’t take consumers or clinicians on the journey; trust and confidence remained low; uptake failed to materialise.
In the initial roll out of the Consumer Data Right, an initiative aimed at giving consumers greater control and more informed choice over their provision of essential services, the actual data to be exchanged in the first mandated sector, banking, was a hard fought battle. Heavily influenced by the vested interests of the multiple parties involved, folks worked overtime to meet the letter of the law (consumer portability) without ceding any more value than absolutely necessary (preserving control and scarcity).
Murky motivations and business interests aside, sharing only the minimum amount of data, often the ‘state’ data (e.g. product type, amount, address) without the history of change data (e.g. establishment date, date of last address change) imposes limitations on the ‘innovative’ / value-producing products that could be built on top.
A data exchange for managing distributed energy resources is a different beast again of course. But it shares enough similarities (including being built by humans!) that we’d be foolish not to take note and learn from the past. Two key points that stand out for me:
From the get go, we need to actively work to build consumer trust in order to see wide, rapid adoption without direct coercion (fantastic deep dive into that idea here courtesy again of Project EDGE). Data exchanges never work when they are viewed as ‘just a technical project’.
And we must not fall into the trap of leaving good chunks of necessary attributes behind, marooned in splendid isolation in appliances, smart meters and energy assets. It’s imperative that the data exchanged includes enough information to be able to build smart applications on top from day one.
Till next time
High winds mean I’m unlikely to be weeding saplings this weekend. So instead I’ll be sowing native trees from seed for planting out in the winter! Wish me luck.