The Power of Data
Event Summary
We cannot think any more of a society without the use of data. In our personal lives, the Facebooks and Googles sometimes know more about us than we do ourselves. How does the rapid development of data applications influence the energy transition? And what is the potential of data use to accelerate the energy transition, if we scale it in the right way? We have invited three speakers to share their experience and view for the future.
The potential of Open Data (Paul Suijkerbuijk, VNG)
The potential of Open Data is large, especially since more and more data is becoming available. The principle of ‘open government’ is a government that works with open data, allowing and even actively stimulating this data to be used. Think of for example of interaction between a farmer and local water board, the open disclosure of air quality data with city residents or an inventory of earthquake data from Groningen to show the severity of the importunity. Open Data should be looked at from societal value, rather than an economic value. The Netherlands has a Freedom of Information Act, but the act is reactive: there should be a request in order for data to be released. With open data, this changes: data is shared in a proactive way. But is having a law on proactive sharing of open data helping to create more useful open data?
The power of local optimisation (Florijn de Graaf, Spectral)
In the energy transition, the generation of renewable electricity will become more decentralized. These decentralized energy systems lead to emergence of local energy communities. Schoonschip (Amsterdam) is an example of an innovative community smart grid that experiments with its own energy management. The experiment includes variable local energy prices (i.e. cheaper energy at the time that more energy is being produced), local energy storage and gasification of organic waste. The energy statistics of all individual houses and the community as a whole can be viewed online. Spectral is also working on more of these area-level smart grids. However: smart grids do require open data, which leads to both privacy discussions and greater risks of data misuse…
Robotic Power Trading and Automated Demand Response (Hubert Spruijt, Senfal)
The energy markets function on both day-ahead and intraday markets. Senfal is the ‘last mile specialist’, and focuses on everything that happens the next 36 hours. Through robotic power trading they automatically sell and buy power for their customers. Based on a price prediction, a decision is made to trade power or not, for example using day-ahead forecasts. Through automated demand response, they enable on/off-decisions, for example for water pumps that have to run a certain number of hours a day. Both functionalities optimise the energy use of assets, and thereby optimise the supply and demand in the energy market as a whole.
