The ENERGY Sector

OPEN DEI will be an essential pillar of the implementation of EU digitisation policies by addressing in particular the “support” to the currently ongoing Large-Scale Pilots (LSPs) and platform projects financed by the European Commission under the Digitising European Industries (DEI) Focus Area working in different strategic sectors: one of them is the Energy domain.

Description

The global energy system is experiencing a revolutionary transition from the present single-carrier, fossil-based status towards an integrated, low-carbon and market-based one.

Due to the increasing complexity, there is an urgent need to unlock smart technologies and services to ensure secure, reliable, resilient, accessible and cost-efficient solutions.

In the next future, the Integrated Energy Systems (IES) will consist of four inter-connected and inter-related layers:

Digitalisation

Digitalisation has become the main tool and driver of the power system transition and therefore requires central priority. It has three main components:

This complexity requires higher levels of operational excellence with the adoption of disrupting  technologies to foster cross-domain data sharing and data-driven innovation. In this context a standardized software platform is the key enabler of interoperability and main vehicle for a rapid implementation of innovative energy services. OPEN DEI will evaluate, analyse and propose reference platforms that will constitute the basis of the four IES layers.

Particular attention is assigned to the open source platforms, for which FIWARE framework provides software components that are open source, easy adoptable and that can be assembled together with other third-party platform components to accelerate implementation of smart internet-related applications.

The amount of data that is exchanged between different domains and levels of the energy systems is continuously increasing and requires effective measures to be managed.

The following key elements in data management, in support of a data economy, need to be fulfilled:

These aspects will be investigated by OPEN DEI in defining the recommendations and optimal specifications of platforms for energy sector.

Among these properties, interoperability plays a key role in the future systems: it allows the user to be independent in managing the own architectures/devices and guarantees the integration of each component in the deployed solution.

A main aspect corresponds to the specification of a common data exchange format. In this context, SAREF (Smart Appliance REFerence ontology) is a shared model of consensus that facilitates the matching of existing assets (standards/protocols/datamodels/etc.) in the smart appliances domain. The use of SAREF provides building blocks that allow separation and recombination of different parts of the ontology depending on specific needs. The complete mapping of energy services to SAREF is an effective support to enhance applicability of proposed architectures.

Additionally, it is necessary to identify and promote standard protocols, information models and data models related to each different level of the energy systems, to ensure successful deployment of implemented services.

OPEN DEI Projects

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

Energy

OPEN DEI Next Steps

Following the Energy domain workshop (held on April 6, 2020), the creation of four working groups has been agreed: Use-cases explorer, Data/Shared-infrastructures, Linking eco-systems and Technical topics. The action lines of each working group are being defined in individual meetings, together with cooperation with external stakeholders (such as BRIDGE Inititative, Linux Foundation Energy and ETIP-SNET) in the Energy sector.