What is Open Energy?
Open Energy includes:
1. The IB1 Constellation: connect with an expert network of professionals
2. Icebreaking: engage in governance-led discovery and design of Schemes (the rulebooks of data sharing)
3. Trust Services: implement Scheme(s) in your business, at market scale, using the Energy Sector Trust Framework, Search services, verification and assurance.
Open Energy was initiated in 2020 by Icebreaker One, backed by UK (UKRI) public funding.
“The inhibitor to innovation is not technology, it is culture. Building on deep domain-knowledge of the energy sector, open standards development and national data infrastructure architectures, we will explore the creation of a standards-based, federated data ecosystem that will address the needs of many users across aggregation layers.
Today’s complex value-chains are not working efficiently at-scale due to high transaction costs. Lack of good data-flow is leading to misallocation of resources and missed opportunities.
Broad digital transformation is reaching maturity across industries—now is the time to apply an appropriate data infrastructure, and help engage in a ‘web of energy data’ whose architecture enables each organisation to control the flow and usage of their own data. We believe the opportunity is to create the equivalent of the 1926 Weir report to rationalise our energy data infrastructure.” — IB1 concept note 2020-06-15
Becoming a Member of Open Energy provides a strategic opportunity to shape the future of energy data infrastructure while unlocking commercial, operational, and regulatory value. As a member, your organisation gains early access to the design and implementation of pre-competitive, open standards that support trusted, scalable data sharing across the energy sector. This enables faster product development, easier compliance with emerging regulation, and leadership in the digital transformation of the energy system. Membership includes participation in working groups and insight briefings, positioning your business at the forefront of interoperable, market-ready data services that support the UK’s net-zero and smart systems ambitions.
Members, collaborators and observers of Open Energy in the UK include
Collaborate on the rules, compete on the game
Open Energy makes it easy to search (e.g. via https://openenergy.org.uk as one example), discover, access, securely share and use energy data using the Energy Sector Trust Framework. It addresses both Open Data, commercial Shared Data either with pre-authorised access controls or specific consent/permission-based control.
Data always flows peer-to-peer from a data supplier (e.g. smart meter data) to a data user (e.g. an application provider). It never goes via the Trust Framework. Open Energy helps members agree how to share data and verifies they have agreed to the rules.
Energy Systems Catapult (who authored the ‘Digital Spine’ report), in collaboration with Ovo Energy, Clean energy retail: The role of energy retailers in the net zero transition states:
“The regulator should mandate Open Energy as an industry-wide data sharing mechanism. Open Energy has, via a competition run by government, created a service that enables trusted actors to share data in a consistent way across the energy value chain. Mandating this solution would accelerate its adoption and make consistent an approach, reducing costs and barriers to entry.” (page 20)
Open Net Zero is a search engine (a catalogue, not a data store) to aid data discovery across sectors and markets, https://openenergy.org.uk is a ‘view on’ on that catalogue for the energy sector as an illustration of what’s possible when open standards are implemented well.