Digitalisation is no longer an opt-in process and it is important that the energy sector keeps up. The UK’s first Energy Digitalisation Strategy outlined the necessity of a digitised energy system, stating only intelligent data-based systems can accommodate the influx of millions of new energy flows.
Gaining access to the right data, though, is another question—decisions cannot be based on inaccurate or irrelevant data. Paul Linnane, chief data officer at ElectraLink, talks to Current± about how the energy industry can harness data to establish a future-ready market.
Why is it important to make data accessible in this way at this point in time? How could it impact the future development of the UK energy market?
The rapid uptake of low-carbon technologies (LCTs) such as EVs and heat pumps has made the UK energy market unpredictable and change at uneven paces in different areas. With these technologies come endless data streams to feed into decision-making at different levels, from individual households to grid operators.
Using EMPRIS to produce insights from this data at a wider level will provide clarity and support models that make energy usage and generation patterns manageable, so the insights derived from EMPRIS will be extremely useful for planning and investment. It will also allow industry to monitor how fast things are changing and open the doors to all manner of solutions.
Timing is also important because multiple recent events, including the pandemic, wholesale price spikes and new government policies, have triggered quick shifts in consumer behaviour and industry priorities. The sooner my industry colleagues have insight into how these shifts are playing out, the sooner we can all start mitigating against disruption.
The energy market has evolved in many ways I had not foreseen even five years ago. But what has not changed is how difficult it is for large industry players to access information on their own end users. ElectraLink’s long history with the Data Transfer Service (DTS), and handling data that is central to critical market processes, means we have a reliable path to accessing data from the energy system. A combination of governance arrangements and unique technology has made accurate data accessible in a flash through EMPRIS.
What will the impact be of access to retail market data? Could we see more innovation within this space and more unique entrants to the market?
The UK’s commitment to Net Zero has created endless new needs and this has only been amplified with geopolitical issues and evolving technology. Retail energy data will help businesses find pain points among energy users and offer many new solutions.
Innovation is at the core of EMPRIS’s purpose. By offering data in a standardised form that can be easily investigated, a broader range of skilled entrepreneurs and their delivery teams can enter the energy market and other fields such as finance and property tech. Since everyone uses energy daily, everyone has something to gain from new business models. Look no further than energy companies teaming up with mortgage lenders, or smartphone apps that offer personalised advice for energy efficiency.
The benefits go beyond unique market entrants. ElectraLink has dozens of examples of projects where DNOs and suppliers have made use of the industry data we hold. EMPRIS offers a route to accessing this data outside of the typical procurement pipeline and things can happen a lot faster. I think that will be music to project managers’ ears.
What types of data do you provide access to? Why is it important to ensure this is available for all energy market stakeholders, and what can it be used for?
Since 2013, ElectraLink has had permission from the energy industry to take a copy of and store every data flow that crosses the DTS. This data is instrumental in facilitating switching, smart meter installations and settlement. We have made the data from these flows accessible through EMPRIS and it includes the likes of:
- Industry technical information such as meter details and significant dates
- Consumption and generation volumes
- Embedded generation MPANs and locations
- Historical supplier portfolios
- Smart, legacy and prepayment meter installations
- Switching activity
- And much more.
We have also loaded EMPRIS with open data from a variety of sources, such as embedded capacity registers and postcode lookup, to allow users to access combined insights. All the data is updated in real time to make sure insights are up to date and relevant.
All stakeholders in the energy system need access to the same data because the whole system needs concurrent change. Querying different datasets can produce different results and misaligned visualisations, leading to duplication of tasks and mismatched business decisions. Energy users needs dictate the changes that EMPRIS reveals and if anyone is left behind we all face delays and extra cost.
This data can be used for new business cases, assessing policy implementation, establishing the success of industry programmes, tracking trends and performance, and backing up claims.
Where else is this data accessible from, if anywhere?
This is the first time all of this data has been made accessible from a single, centralised source with low barriers for entry and the highest governance and security levels.
Individual organisations could theoretically provide the data they have from their operations and business performance. However, organisations acquiring this data will likely face many hurdles from governance to data formatting to system integration – this goes for open data as well as private data. There are several aggregators and solutions providers that could offer pieces of the energy market puzzle, but then the customers would have to put the pieces together themselves and incorporate more technology to visualise the results. EMPRIS removes the need to source disparate datasets and then import the data into visualisation software – all of this is available within the platform.
Where are some of the challenges in harnessing data for the energy industry? How could these be overcome?
Until recently, challenges in harnessing energy data have largely come down to a lack of investment in digital systems. Where other industries like banking and telecoms embraced digitalisation early on, the energy market fell behind. There have always been a few centralised networks like the DTS which help industry parties to share data, but our systems still do a lot of translating and validating.
Data quality also needs addressing if the energy industry is going to become fully interoperable and end users are going to have a positive experience. Data can be out of date, incorrectly input or read, incomplete or in the wrong format for a particular system. As I mentioned before, this leads to incorrect results and incompatibility which can be detrimental to automated processes and uncovering accurate, helpful facts about the energy sector.
It also takes a lot of resources and skilled professionals to decide what data you need, ingress it into your systems and keep it updated. After that, knowledgeable technicians and experts need to play with the data to uncover insights and find applications for what has been discovered.
Overcoming these challenges will take a range of interconnected solutions. More open data is a straightforward starting point since we already have successful examples in the industry. ElectraLink has also been working on several projects that have suggested routes to develop data standards to support interoperability.
Then we also need to make data accessible through more customer-centric solutions like EMPRIS. With the customer in mind, accessing and using the data becomes much faster and simpler. EMPRIS contains billions of rows of data and produces results within minutes, meaning a greater range of industry colleagues can harness the data and explore the energy system without the paperwork and expense of an entire project.
What do you hope to achieve within the next five years regarding data accessibility and your product? What would you also hope the energy landscape/policy will look like?
ElectraLink and I, personally, would like to see a variety of organisations using EMPRIS to find insights and act on them. Ofgem and DESNZ already use EMPRIS to monitor energy market performance and ElectraLink uses it to provide free monthly updates on switching and smart meter installations which in themselves are already supporting awareness of how industry programmes and consumer behaviour is progressing. But the growing selection of datasets available on EMPRIS means more and more organisations, from businesses to local authorities to universities and news publications, will be able to benefit from insight into the energy market.
On the back of that, we believe new use cases and business models will flourish from unique and specific knowledge of where the energy market is triggering challenges most rapidly. We hope users will see the power of data-driven insights for their organisations and harness this information to improve existing performance and processes.
Ultimately, we hope EMPRIS will play a part in a fully digitalised energy system using granular data to improve outcomes for customers, keep the industry stable and secure, and achieve Net Zero as soon as feasibly possible.
Is there anything else about data accessibility that we haven’t covered but that you want our audience to know?
ElectraLink has spent years campaigning for our industry peers to make data more accessible and for relevant authorities or policy decision-makers to incentivise this. The DNOs are doing great work to make this intelligible for people within and outside of the industry, and data collaboration would be even further ahead with more organisations like Energy Systems Catapult. We encourage other businesses to do the same.
