Estonian electricity and gas operator Elering has launched an international competition to select pilots of innovative energy products and services that need access to metering data.
 
The chosen pilots will develop and test access to cross-border energy metering data and thus also develop smart energy services for enterprises and end users alike.
 
“For energy companies, access to metering data provides the ground for innovative and smart solutions and new business models, which widens the alternatives offered to the consumer and, through it, also better price,” said Taavi Veskimägi, CEO of Elering. “For that reason, we call upon energy service providers and developers from all over Europe to develop access to cross-border energy metering data.”
 
Successful applicants will be granted access to the Sandbox environment of Estfeed’s data exchange platform where, in cooperation with other European grid operators, mock metering data from different countries is provided.
 
“The aim of these pan-European pilots is to develop and test energy services which want to use the private metering data of data owners (private customers and enterprises) to expand those services to new markets and new customers,” said Kaija Valdmaa, product owner of the Estfeed platform. “We are excited to test Estfeed, which was launched in 2017, Europe-wide. We look forward to the feedback from international energy service providers to improve user experience of the Estfeed platform and scale it to the whole of Europe.”
 
On May 1st, up to ten best pilot projects will be selected from the submitted applications that will run from May to December 2020.
 
“Our main goal is to develop a reliable and secure energy data access platform which could be used by energy services providers throughout Europe, from Sweden to Spain and Estonia to the Netherlands,” said Valdmaa.
 
According to Veskimägi, the prerequisite for the successful implementation of these pilot projects is a smooth and secure cross-border metering data exchange within the European Union. For this purpose, eight grid operators from Europe started a collaboration to discuss the grounds for establishing an energy data access alliance with the aim to develop cross-border metering data access in Europe.
 
Elering is a developer of digital energy systems that use consumers’ metering data. These include the Estfeed platform, which is based on the Estonian X-road data exchange layer. It enables energy service providers and developers to access consumer metering data based on consumer consent and therefore creates the infrastructure needed to connect European energy markets digitally.
 
As a single window inter-mediator, Estfeed connects data sources and data consumers, thus allowing energy services to access personalised data, which is then shared, with legal consent, by the end consumer.