[The selection of the Lab] Better share the energy, thanks to datas !
An increasing amount of data is being generated and made available in the domaine of energy production. But how can this data be used to improve energy consumption? Can the energy produced be shared and reused efficiently for all? This article takes explores the possibilities, initiatives and generated by energy data.
Consuming less by measuring
Current efforts to reduce energy consumption through data is often limited to the rapid diagnosis of the energy provider who go by simple factors like the surface of our home or type of heating. Comprehensive smart meters that offer a “fairer way to bill” like ‘Linky’ by the French company Enedis have been developed, but the applications potential certainly exceeds its current use.
Nevertheless, an increasing amount of services are being developed that use energy data to reduce our energy consumption.
One of the main players in the domain of monitoring is NEST, the home automation subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet. With the aim of automatically optimizing energy consumption and overal comfort, it offers different types of equipment for homes like intelligent thermostats, presence detectors and more.
Although our houses may already be controlled, we must now ask ourselves who controls our data?
Allowing users to consciously consume energy while remaining in control of their data, the Welsh company OpenEnergyMonitor offers an open source model for a similar type of monitoring as Nest. Although a useful tool, users should be prepared to invest some time and understanding, as it is not necessarily the most intuitive to use.
An examples of a more B2B solutions is the American company Tendril. Developing applications that analyze behavior, evaluate the energy performance of homes and offer users personalized services, Tendril is selling its white label application to energy suppliers like Engie, which just invested $ 7.2 million in the company.
The Franco-Moroccan company Elum Energy meanwhile offers its energy OS software to industrial or tertiary complexes. This software, which predicts and analyses trends helps them reduce their costs significantly. It allows them to choose between different energy sources, electricity networks, storage and local production (solar, wind, thermal).
Sharing energy between individuals (P2P)
New information technologies and transaction methods also offer new opportunities for individuals to exchange energy. Supported by the State of New York, the local Brooklyn micro network TransActive for example uses Blockchain technology for the resale of locally produced solar energy, without any intermediaries.
Like this, the Dutch company Qurrent uses a cooperative model to connect its members via a box and network that allows them to produce and share renewable energy. Each cooperator, whether consumer or producer, participates in decisions and investments that notably involve developing a wind and solar park to provide and the renewable energy for consumption.
In a similar fashion the start-up SOLshare in Bangladesh, (read more about this in this article) allows peer-to-peer sharing of solar energy on a local scale. Beyond economic and financial benefits, this initiative enables households that are not connected to the country’s central power system or have a poor connection to be supplied with a reliable flow of energy.
Taking control of our data
From the multiple initiatives and the opening up of energy consumption data, flows a large quantity of information that is not necessarily being used to the financial nor technical benefit for all.
In order to make the overflow of data more tangible, the academic European project Open Power System Data (OPSD) is developing a free platform that checks, processes, documents and publishes data in a format that is easy to use, and which is put at the disposal to those who are modeling power networks.
The SEED (Standard Energy Efficiency Data) initiative on the other hand intends to improve the energy efficiency of buildings by facilitating the implementation of energy projects. With a platform developed by the US Department of Energy at their disposal, cities and states can then manage multiple data sets from multiple origins in an efficient and inexpensive way.
[Translation by Bianca Pick : https://medium.com/@biancapick]
These cases all illustrate the data challenges in light of the energy transition. They are topics that will be explored through the Datacities project that is supported by The Lab OuiShare x Chronos and its partners.
