Consumers must be at heart of EU energy-saving interoperability efforts, says VizLore director

Europe is filled with new technologies to improve energy efficiency and save CO2 emissions, but getting those technologies connected and used efficiently is problematic. Milenko Tošić, director of innovation at VizLore Labs Foundation, spoke with Euractiv about the challenges and opportunities.

DK: There are a lot of energy-saving applications in Europe today. How interoperable are they?

MT: When we started the InterConnect project we addressed a general level of interoperability between the IOT sector and small buildings and homes, but nevertheless lately one of the main discussion points inside the European Commission and one of the main parts of the energy sector and digitalization plan was to tackle this consumer participation in different energy-saving applications and how can they be interoperable.

On the highest level, we can say that they are [trying to achieve] the same thing. But when we go deeper into the technology we see that in most cases, these applications are operating more or less like extended technological silos.

In March of last year, a group called ETRA in Spain produced a report providing an extensive landscape study on energy platforms and consumer applications coming from the side of DSOs, retailers, transport system operators, third parties and some national systems.

They provided a really extensive analysis of why they’re set up, how they operate and how far they are with engagement with consumers. They didn’t go so much into detail about how interoperable they are but it was evident there was limited cooperation between these initiatives. They also introduced a report titled “Towards a Common European Reference Framework for Consumer Applications.”

These two inputs were the driving force for what the Commission is calling a Common European Reference Framework for Energy-Saving Applications.

It’s all about interoperable data exchange between participating parties, creating what is called either the data space or a pool of knowledge into which the energy applications or those who are developing them and serving them to the consumers can tap into, to have their own recommendations for the specific types of consumers.

So I would say that the fact that the Commission actually is putting in place this strategy for developing the common European Reference Framework shows that there is a lack of true interoperability on the side of semantic interoperability and data exchange between existing solutions.

DK: How does this lack of interoperability impact consumers?

MT: In most cases, interoperability would be something solution integrators are concerned with, especially when we talk about data interoperability, so they can focus on engaging consumers in innovative ways.

For the consumers themselves, the main benefit would be if you are setting up your smart home system or you want to be a part of these energy-saving initiatives, you are going to be locked to a vendor. But if you have a set of suppliers who are part of this interoperability initiative then you don’t have to lock yourself into a specific ecosystem. You can have different manufacturers for different appliances. You can buy things on sale.

That’s one benefit, and the other is on the service side. Most of the things are happening through mobile applications that have different interfaces and different services providing recommendations and tips to the consumers.

They’re also based more or less on the data that the consumers are providing. So you as a consumer want to know what’s happening with your data and you want to be able to choose between service providers. As you can be locked with your devices, you can also be locked with your applications.

With [a common European reference framework] you would be able to choose: OK, I’m going with this solution provider for an energy management system, and this one for the application itself because it’s more attuned to my privacy concerns. But, that doesn’t provide super personalized recommendations. So maybe someone else wants something that is super tailored to me and not something on a general level [but also giving up more privacy]. It gives the flexibility to choose.

DK: So to respond to these needs, and also to the development of the framework, the InterConnect project has been launched. It’s made up of 51 European entities involved in demonstrating advanced solutions for these issues. What have been the results so far?

MT: For the technical results, we have some outcomes in the semantic interoperability framework – a set of software tools that allows integrators on the grid side and on the smart building side to exchange information in an interoperable manner.

It’s a bit different from our previous projects before InterConnect which provided this interoperability with some data control middleware, where all the service providers are sending their data to be remapped, reshaped and then redistributed while introducing of course a lot of privacy and trustworthiness.

We have more than 60 interoperable services which were produced, and there is capacity to build on those. Some were developed for the project, some for commercial services stakeholders were operating before and made interoperable with our instructions.

DK: What were the main challenges encountered during the project?

MT: All of the projects operating at that time were suffering from a pandemic, but it hit us at the stage where a lot of discussions were necessary. With 50 partners it was really hard to manage all those online sessions.

After that, we started with pilot implementations and our manufacturers started distributing these small appliances. But Covid impacted the supply chains. It’s a big consortium with 50 partners, and some of them were competitors. So it was challenging to put them all together to set up a proper set of requirements, establishing an interoperability between them before we even get to the area of semantic interoperability.

We tasked ourselves to deploy our solutions in seven different countries which each had their own situations of grid readiness. All of that had to be digested so we could extract a set of common requirements that can actually guide us to results.

It was a challenge to bring manufacturers on board to the same way of exchanging information. It’s one thing to discuss, everyone is in favour of semantic interoperability, they see the benefits. But when it comes to the actual implementation it is cumbersome work. A large manufacturer has a limited budget like everyone else, so expecting them to do work on their firmware and software is a stretch. So they want plug-and-play solutions, they say make it happen without engaging my engineers.

DK: You mentioned that there are competitors within the consortium. How willing have the different stakeholders in the energy area, such as utilities, consumers, power generators, app developers and government authorities, been to share data with each other? Are there concerns over trade secrets or competitiveness?

MT: In a consortium this big it was inevitable to have direct competitors participating, even within the same pilots. It’s really an open ecosystem of data sharing we’re proposing where everything can be accessible, and in the industrial world and the real market that’s a stretch, to say the least. So we introduced these solutions gradually, so they could test in a constrained environment with mock data.

We also restricted access level and who your data can work with, to really establish those ecosystems needed for the pilots and initial tests. Some pilots remained quite closed. Some were more open. It depends on the composition. But this was actually necessary to allow them to still feel in control of where their information data and the knowledge actually goes.

DK: What is needed at a policy level to improve interoperability with energy-saving applications? What would make things easier for consumers?

MT: I think what the Common European Framework is tasked to do can really provide some insight into what is needed on the regulation side. This enabling or democratising of how data is shared and accessed by different stakeholders is an important part to be regulated and taken care of carefully because it’s powerful, in the sense that it can be used to intelligently monitor and mange systems but it can also provide a lot of misuse potential not just for intentional attacks but also profiling and things that are not in line with European values.

So we need to ensure that regulations across Europe, regional and local, are on the same level to enable the same incentives for end consumers to participate.

We’re talking about energy-saving applications and consumers are the ones who are seen as key partners going forward for the stability of the energy system. Whether they’ll act on different eco-tips and gradually become more energy-aware, for these incentives it’s really necessary to have flexible tariffs, better penetration of smart metering, and make it clear how this data is collected and used by whom.

We need to make sure consumers are partners because they’re the providers of the data. They should be rewarded and put in control.

[By Dave Keating I Edited by Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]

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