In 2019, the EU completed the final step of the Clean Energy For All Europeans Package (CEP) which is aimed at improving sustainability efforts.

What does this mean for utilities and how can they play a part in making the directive a success?

Understanding the Clean Energy Package (CEP)

The Clean Energy Package is a framework proposed by the EU to steer energy companies towards cleaner, more sustainable operations. To achieve this objective, the CEP has proposed multiple directives and guidelines to facilitate new business models and revamped energy legislation.

The eight core directives of the latest CEP agreement (which can be read in detail here) are:

• Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU) 2018/844
• Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001
• Energy Efficiency Directive (EU) 2018/2002
• Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action Regulation (EU) 2018/1999
• Electricity Regulation (EU) 2019/943
• Electricity Directive (EU) 2019/944
• Regulation on Risk-Preparedness in the Electricity Sector (EU) 2019/941
• Regulation on the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (EU) 2019/942

A key point of the CEP is to empower consumers and give them more control over their personal data, in addition to providing better protection to vulnerable customers. This is in line with the Energy Union, a policy brought forward by the European Commission to improve access to clean, sustainable, and affordable energy.

The CEP will help the EU meet its climate targets along with satisfying goals defined in other sustainability directives, including the Paris Agreement.This will create a future where utilities, consumers, and other relevant parties thrive together in a clean and sustainable environment, inching the EU closer to its target of 20% renewable energy usage by 2020.

How Will This Impact Utilities?

To comply with the CEP, Article 23 suggests utilities must disclose necessary energy data to consumers at no cost and make it easy for them to access the information. This rule does not only affect TSOs and DSOs, but also aggregators, service companies, or any organizations that provide energy services to the market.

Utilities must ensure sensitive data is managed the right way, in line with EU data protection regulations. Consumer contracts should include what data is to be shared and in what way. Any data shared with third parties can only go ahead with the explicit consent of consumers regardless of how trivial the shared information is.

Article 24 also encourages utilities to improve interoperability with other energy companies and providers—think of it as groups of national datahubs working with each other for the common good. This is achieved through agreed-upon interoperability requirements and non-discriminatory procedures based on current national practices adopted by member states of the EU.

The rule was proposed to promote healthy competition and combat unreasonable administrative fees, thus preventing monopolies. It also lowers the barrier to entry for new market participants—including startups and organizations entering a new region—which further encourages competition and innovation.

Competitive markets are great for consumers because prices are naturally regulated. The CEP does allow exemptions for special scenarios, however. Of course, utilities benefit as well from competition. Ambitious rivals will push each other in pursuit of business advantages, leading to inventive solutions that benefit the industry as a whole.

These changes leave two questions to be answered by utilities. How can they meet the directive suggested for the CEP’s data revolution in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible? At the same time, how can utilities learn and make more sense of their tremendous volumes of data?

How Greenbird Provides a Link Between the CEP and Utility Data

Utilities have no problems collecting data. The problem is, they don’t understand what to do with it. As much as 80% of valuable data is lost to cumbersome data integration and analysis processes. ‘Dark data’ is a major concern in utilities and it’s severely impacting their ability to meet the CEP goals. These problems hinder not only business performance, but also slow down sustainability efforts.

We understand this problem, which is why we designed Utilihive to address these serious concerns. Utilihive allows utilities to finally put data to optimum use in their business processes to accelerate innovation. We solve this problem by eliminating integration challenges in utility platforms with these solutions:

• Connectors for legacy systems to ease the integration of data between smart metering systems, IoT platforms, enterprise applications (e.g. ERPs, CRMs), and any data source.
• Data Flows and pre-built data pipelines to streamline data flow across the entire value chain to accelerate innovation while mitigating the risks that come with it.
• Data Lakes designed to collect, store, and analyze critical utility data in real-time to improve decision making and enable technologies like AI and automation in your organization.
• Data APIs built from high-performing REST APIs to enable advanced analytics, machine learning, AI and big data to further boost innovation and the rapid delivery of innovative solutions.

We are staunch supporters of the CEP and sustainable development in general, and we want to help utilities achieve the goals outlined in the package to create a clean, sustainable future.

Are you ready to start now?

About Greenbird
Greenbird offers out-of-the-box system integration for utilities. We are a true DevOps company, delivering unique time-to-market and reliability. We were named a Gartner ‘Cool Vendor’ in 2018 because of our domain-specific and flexible integration capabilities, crucial for creating easy-to-consume integrated solutions. Utilihive empowers utilities to manage their data flow faster and smoother than traditional system integration models while accelerating the journey towards the energy revolution. Greenbird is based in Oslo, Norway.