Proposal 11 – Achieving system optimisation through shared intelligence

26 November 2019

Industry to establish industry-wide data sharing arrangements. 

Government, energy system infrastructure, vehicle (including state-of-charge) and energy market data should be made available at a local and national level, to allow innovation, planning, investment and operational decisions around EV load and infrastructure system optimisation by the appropriate parties. For example, for a DNO to better understand reinforcement and deployment of low voltage network monitoring, for installers to understand network capacity headroom and presence of smart charging schemes at a local level, or for the ESO to maintain system frequency and stability of the electricity system. Data access and rules must develop in a way that encourages ongoing innovation and opens up the market to new solutions – the recommendations from the EDTF [41] for data being presumed open, with a suitable triage process for access, should be implemented. Market participants should collect and share anonymised, statistical data on EV usage patterns, charging and energy consumption with relevant parties in order to allow the energy and transport systems to work effectively together and provide value to all market participants. There is significant uncertainty in the nature of the future transport system, particularly with respect to new business models such as Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), therefore data availability and access will enable electricity networks and others to deliver a reliable and efficient electricity system. 

A full list of EV and associated energy infrastructure data is provided in the Work Package Four Report. 

Consideration should be given to the following points: 

• Digital integration must be inclusive to all market participants to maximise the uptake of electric vehicles and unlock whole energy system benefits; 
• There needs to be clear guidance with regards to governance of data ownership, sharing and management among all market participants to create a level playing field; 
• Digital integration is not bound by national boundaries and a global market view should be adopted for the UK; 
• Customer choice, customer assurance and customer value will determine the pace of innovation and time to market for novel digital products and services; and 
• The digital integration of electric vehicles from a whole-system perspective needs to consider wider and future focus areas such as cyber security, increasing levels of automation and artificial intelligence.