E-REDES increases decarbonization collaboration through intuitive data product marketplace

The growth of solar power and the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and smart meters is accelerating the energy transition in Portugal. At E-REDES we knew that sharing our data with key stakeholders was a vital part of supporting this shift, helping our wider ecosystem better understand the current situation and effectively plan their decarbonization efforts moving forward.

To deliver on our data sharing strategy, we wanted to provide all of our stakeholders with seamless, intuitive access to our comprehensive energy data. With diverse audiences, from energy producers and local municipalities to researchers and consumers, it was vital that the data sharing process was simple, straightforward and tailored to the needs of each group.

We therefore created our open data marketplace to share data with its community, increasing transparency, strengthening the ecosystem and supporting overall net zero goals. To power our portal we adopted Huwise’s data marketplace solution, due to the company’s strong energy sector experience and scalable, user-friendly, self-service technology.

Our bilingual portal provides free, open access to data on areas such as renewables production, electricity consumption, electric mobility, network availability and network connection requests. To meet the different needs of our audiences the marketplace delivers a customized experience, with data organized by theme and usage profile, allowing tailored navigation for specific groups and accelerating access to relevant data.

Focusing on municipalities

Portugal’s 278 mainland municipalities are one of the largest users of the portal and E-we consulted them extensively before launch to ensure it delivered on their requirements. To provide a focused experience we have created a specific drill-down municipality dashboard. Staff and citizens can find their municipality by searching by name or via a clickable map and then access local metrics on areas such as monthly consumption, renewable generation, public EV charging points and planned/actual energy interruptions. Through visualizations users can see how specific municipalities compare to others and change over time, delivering transparency and enabling administrators to focus on making better-informed decisions to drive the energy transition.

Increasing innovation

By encouraging the use of our data within the academic and research community, we are looking to unlock innovation and the creation of solutions that transform energy data into value for society. As part of this, we launched the Open Data Academy Challenge Award. This rewards dissertations and master’s projects that focus on the theme of the energy transition and that use data from our data marketplace as a source for research, providing monetary prizes to the three best projects, inspiring innovation and new ideas.

Using self-service to boost efficiency and reduce cost

The decentralization of the energy grid means that a growing number of companies need to connect to E-REDES’ high, medium, and low-voltage networks. For example, EV charging point operators have to know if there is sufficient capacity at the nearest substation when they plan new facilities, while power generators want to be sure they can easily connect to the medium-voltage grid. Before, all of these requests had to be handled manually by E-REDES, taking considerable time and resources. However, now that this information is available via open data, users can self-serve to find the data they require, accelerating the process for themselves and increasing efficiency by reducing the costs of handling data requests.

Thanks to the Huwise platform, we are able to accelerate data sharing with our ecosystem. In particular, we are benefiting from three key features:

• Closer ecosystem relationships

By sharing relevant data in the right formats for its stakeholders, E-REDES has been able to strengthen relationships with key audiences, such as power generators, municipalities, EV charge point operators, academics and consumers. The data portal is supporting greater transparency and delivering a closer working relationship across the ecosystem. Demonstrating its impact, the portal has seen 5.73 million API calls since it went live, with users now each making three times as many API calls as when it launched, showing that they are now using it in a more involved, ongoing way.

• Greater efficiency

E-REDES previously had to allocate substantial resources to manually handle incoming queries about its network from stakeholders such as charge point operators and renewable generators. Now that data can be easily accessed via the portal, the volume of questions has reduced considerably as users are able to research information themselves, increasing efficiency. For example, the monthly number of requests for medium-voltage grid information has dropped from 300 to a minimal level, freeing up two full-time staff to work on other projects.

• Innovation through collaboration

Collaboration is key to delivering net zero, and E-REDES is using the portal to share data with its wider ecosystem, adding new datasets as their needs change. For example, it is currently working with municipalities as they develop their mandatory climate change adaptation plans, providing data in the right formats to harmonize the process and standardize approaches across the country.