In April, we reconvened the Open Energy – Purpose, User & Market Needs Advisory Group 1.

Date: 17 April 2025 14:00-16:00 BST

Co-chairs: Mike Ricketts (SSEN-Distribution); Gea Mikic (Icebreaker One)

Meeting Aims

  1. Understanding what Open Energy is and the plans for 2025
  2. Prioritise and validate a core use case for funding proposals

Summary:

  • In response to the Icebreaker question – ‘What are your biggest challenges when making a business case for data sharing?’, participants noted:
    • Hesitancy to share data due to poor or lacking data quality, and the potential risks of sharing data in case there are regulatory repercussions  
    • There are often internal stakeholder engagement challenges as senior stakeholders struggle to see concrete evidence for the benefits of publishing data 
    • The need to flip the narrative on business value to include broader sector benefits
    • Business cases are typically based on to derived insights, which requires high money and time investment 
    • There is currently limited interest in the processing of data and how it is made ready to share 
      • The challenges of understanding end user needs, to empower them with the right data access for the problem they are trying to solve
  • It was noted that the purpose of AG1 is to explore, define and prioritise use cases and case studies that illustrate the potential for market-wide scale 
  • The proposed use case was discussed and members were asked how the use case could be refined further. 
    • It was noted that in the need for local government organisations’ Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs), there is a tool developed that publishes data useful to those councils
    • Opening up a Local Energy Net Zero Accelerator (LENZA)-type tools to other users was discussed in the context of how a trust framework could allow other users to access data and tools currently available to DNOs and Local Authorities only. 
      • It is noted that some data held there is confidential. A trust framework could establish rules on who, why and how users can access certain combinations of data to e.g. accelerate deployment of low carbon technologies, electric vehicles, energy efficiency
    • It was noted that there is value in establishing a trust framework and standardising the data layer for building multiple tools 
    • The importance of interoperability was noted, with the creation of a tool needing to translate nationally to be scaled across all DNOs 
    • It was noted that the use case could be broadened to opening access to the underlying datasets themselves rather than just the LENZA tool   
  • It was noted that the benefit of Open Energy’s approach is it offers the opportunity to achieve data sharing at scale with the data value chain considered, with members coming together for genuine sharing opportunities with clear value 
  • It was noted that Open Energy is an opportunity to focus on use cases to demonstrate the art of the possible, looking at prior work, shaping the market architecture based upon reciprocity to facilitate data sharing.