“TECNALIA establishes and develops the basis for a federated data space in the energy sector at European level.”
Today's energy systems generate a large amount of high-value data, but their full potential is not realised
The energy transition is moving towards a decentralised system made up of multiple energy carriers (electricity, hydrogen, flexible resources, etc.) and multiple actors such as prosumers, aggregators, and energy communities. Moving towards data valorisation and such a decentralised system requires data sharing in an ecosystem that ensures interoperability and trust between the different actors in the energy value chain.
There is currently no single data sharing platform that connects data from the generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption domains in the electricity sector. Nor are there adequate mechanisms and policies to ensure secure, sovereign, and fair data exchange.
The European Commission is committed to a strategy around the data economy, in line with its core ideas of privacy, fair competition, and self-determination, as described in the European Data Strategy. Examples of this commitment include the initiatives financed by the European Commission related to data spaces in the energy sector, in several of which TECNALIA participates, together with other Basque companies.
A European data space for the energy sector
Together with several European partners, the Basque partners Sener, Meteo For Energy, Hine, and the Energy Cluster of the Basque Country, TECNALIA establishes and develops the basis for a federated data space in the energy sector at European level through the OMEGA-X and ENERSHARE initiatives. These projects, led by ATOS and ENGINEERING, will accelerate the digitisation of the energy sector through the extension of a variety of technology components, including interoperability, trust, data value, and governance, based on common European standards such as GAIA-X and IDSA.
These initiatives will give rise to new business models around the data economy: They will demonstrate its value for different use cases such as distributed renewable generation, resilience provision and energy communities, and develop data services using analytics techniques that combine and extract the full value of data shared by different actors. These services include the development of digital twins for the optimisation of the operation and maintenance of wind turbines and photovoltaic plants, algorithms for the efficient management of energy communities, and tools for the provision of flexibility services using buildings, storage systems and electric vehicles, for example.
Scalability and interoperability
It is essential that the solutions developed ensure scalability and interoperability with other data space initiatives, not only for energy but also cross-sectoral. The int:net initiative, in which TECNALIA participates, aims to coordinate the different initiatives for the development of the future European energy data space.
A model will be developed to assess the maturity of energy systems and services in terms of interoperability. A common framework for interoperability testing will also be promoted and a network of laboratories will be established. Finally, a network of actors involved in interoperability and data spaces will be developed at European level and will last beyond the project, in the form of an association or a similar institution.
