EU-SysFlex blog: New ways of energy data exchange demonstrated
07.06.2021EventsEU-SysFlex project has completed all the demonstrators dedicated to data management and results were just disseminated in a webinar – please visit webinar website to have access to the recording and presentations.
This blog summarises the key takeaways of several data exchange demonstrators whereby the common denominator is easy access to data and market through interoperable cross-border and cross-sector data management arrangement.
To ensure interoperability of flexibility services one needs to focus on data interoperability next to harmonising regulatory/business processes. Therefore, the system use cases designed for “Flexibility Platform” address the issue of homogeneous and secure data management through the concept of Data Exchange Platform. Proper data management contributes to the participation of stakeholders across the geographical borders and of any asset.
“Affordable Tool” in the role of FSP enables to bring smaller customers actively to the energy market willing to sell flexibility by aggregating such customers, consuming data services provided by DEP, and using market services (e.g. bid submission, asset activation) provided by the Flexibility Platform.
Residents of one country are able to access their meter data and share the data with other stakeholders using services (e.g. consent management) provided by DEP located in another country, it is possible to remove barriers from accessing meter data from different organizations in different countries. The biggest obstacle of cross-border data exchange is differing level of authentication available in different countries, however this is being solved within scope of eIDAS (European Regulation on electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services).
Data providers and data users connected to different DEPs (ECCo SP, Estfeed) can exchange data by ensuring interoperability of DEPs. This was demonstrated for private data sharing use case whereby on platform benefitted from consent services provided by another platform. The demonstration was able to add value to ECCo SP by using the consent checking capabilities of Estfeed which allowed it to validate that the application behind ECCo SP had data owner’s consent to receive some private data.
Using dedicated privacy-preserving technologies (Sharemind in this case) it is possible to preserve data owner’s privacy while allowing a third party application (Flexibility Platform in this case) to receive a calculated result based on such private data (calculation of Flexibility Service Provider’s baseline in this case). Use of DEP (Estfeed) ensures that the data owner is aware that the data is used for just given (baseline calculation) purposes but in a privacy-preserving way.
Cross-sector data exchange was demonstrated which proposed a way to add value to users of one system (meter data hub) with data enrichment from another system (building register). The demonstration showed that if the two systems have not been intended to exchange data then sometimes it can be difficult to reliably link the data – the quality of ‘customer address’ was much lower in one system than the other.
DEP can transport to any third-party application results from big data framework, an end-to-end big data process was demonstrated: raw data are collected from external APIs, processed in batch and near-real time with AI algorithms, results are stored in a serving layer and are available through request/response API. This deployed architecture has worked properly at least within a context where the frequency requests were not high, with limited size data results and without specific latency constraints.
It is possible to integrate alternative signing mechanisms to the critical logs that provide the information about the data exchange and participants. The risk of losing critical data logs was reduced from the three aspects: a) signing with different technology; b) adding additional log storage; c) including anti-tamper infrastructure to an existing solution.
It would not take much effort to translate the original API of an implementation (e.g. “Flexibility Platform”) into CIM compliant API, and to replace already implemented original API by CIM compliant API.
Main contributors to demos were Estonian TSO Elering, Polish TSO PSE as well as technical solutions’ providers AKKA (France), Enoco (Norway), Cybernetica (Estonia) and Guardtime (Estonia).
Written by: Kalle Kukk (Elering), leading the EU-SysFlex Work Packages on cross-border and cross-sectoral data management; Philippe Szczech (AKKA), leading task on Flexibility Platform development; Simon Lilleeng (Enoco), leading task on Affordable Tool development
Elering is the electricity and gas transmission system operator in Estonia. Elering`s operations are based on the principle of an open energy market and the awareness of responsibility for ensuring the functioning of the energy market and equal treatment of all energy market participants. Elering operates as the competence centre of energy field initiating the research and development projects and contributes with its know-how in the area of policy formulation. Elering recognizes the importance of a widespread use of information and communication technologies in the development of energy systems. In its operations, Elering takes into account expectations of interest groups and supports Estonian economy and competitiveness.
AKKA Informatique et Systèmes belongs to the AKKA TECHNOLOGIES group (www.akka.eu) one ofthe major engineering and technology consultancy group in Europe, staffed with more than 12000persons. AKKA proposes a balanced and diversified portfolio of activities and accompanies itscustomers at each stage in the life-cycle of their products. AKKA has been qualified with conformitycertificate ISO 9001 version 2000, EN 9100 for its space and aeronautic activities and CMMI level 3certification. AKKA ICT expertise includes the design and development of highly distributedapplications, model-based system engineering, Linked Data and knowledge management for semantic-based analysis and exploitation of scientific data, servers and network architecture optimization, security techniques for data and services in the Cloud, Big Data architectures and solutions, mobile devices integration.
Enoco is a private enterprise established in 2009, and has specialised on developing andimplementing energy efficient Building Management Systems. In addition to optimising thetraditional technical systems like ventilation, heating/cooling and light system, Enoco has developed unique energy control systems for large and medium buildings. Enoco has developed a unique power-peak control system, where all consumers in the building are established with its pre-defined priority – applied to disable or enable it during power demanding periods – ensuring that the total power outtake and energy consumption of the building does not exceed predefined limits.Furthermore – Enoco has developed a cloud based Energy Surveillance/Monitoring System (EMS).
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Disclaimer: blog entries reflect individual views of the author(s) that may not reflect official positions or communication of the project / project consortium.