With strengthened EU energy cooperation on the horizon, Enershare has €8 million to launch Europe's "first" energy data space

Lisbon-based energy data space consortium Enershare has been awarded €8 million by the European Commission to deliver a "first-of-its-kind" reference implementation for building data spaces for IT to drive cross-border European energy data projects.

Enershare's core objective is to develop a viable worktop for managing, integrating and running services from big data, providing a "trusted, secure and sovereign" playing field where collaborations are fostered and include both energy and non-energy stakeholders.

The three-year project is regarded as supporting the EU's ambitions for energy data sharing, as set out in the overarching European Strategy for Data in which improved sustainability and energy efficiency is cited among key outcomes (alongside healthcare, transport, products and public services.)

Enershare will set out its stall at the interplay of energy data, non-energy data and "data value" chains, the aim is to build an ecosystem that's entirely consumer-centric, "participatory" and data-driven.

Vast data networks linking decentralised data sources will lead to the creation of new digital twins - data apps and visualisations which track energy assets and profiles on a consistent basis - and for a great number of energy related purposes, Enershare claims.

Dr. Massimo Bertoncini, project coordinator of Enershare, said digitised energy infrastructure was a key priority outlined in the European Commission's recommendations for integrating EU energy systems.

Bertoncini's team will work to create two broad strands for energy data sharing; firstly to let energy sector players exchange data securely, and secondly to roll up data from other industries, allowing EU stakeholders to design, action and harmonise data-based initiatives.

This should also lead to isolated and hard-to-reach data becoming easier to access, share and reuse, Enershare said.

The public-private initiative is being led by Italian digital transformation consultancy Engineering, where Bertonicini is R&D programme director.  But there's a wide spectrum of participants across the 30 other consortium members (which span 12 EU member states) ranging from Lithuanian power producer Elektro Ljubljana to the Basque Country's energy cluster and numerous academic institutions, including National Technical University of Athens.

Bertoncini has been handed the mammoth task of co-ordinating such a diverse range of interests, for instance making sure it has a "leading-edge" data space architecture that's easily reconciled with both European cloud standards (GAIA-X) and the IDSA (International Data Space Association.)

Bertoncini said: "Huge demand for (common European energy) information requires new concepts, architectures, solutions, governance and business models suitable to the energy domain on how to share, trust and exchange data efficiently among and across energy and non-energy stakeholders."