Energy Industry Missing Out On £4 Billion A Year By Hoarding Data
Data sharing by industry players within the UK energy sector could produce savings of up to £4 billion a year, according to Chris Pritchett, Head of Energy at Foot Anstey
More than half of the UK's power came from renewable sources this summer - with shipping container-sized grid storage batteries capturing the energy for when needed. But modelling work carried out by energy law experts at Foot Anstey in partnership with energy systems developers QBots suggests £70,000 is being lost for every MW of peak capacity. The loss is caused by inefficiencies going unchecked because different players - battery owners, manufacturers and system operators - are not sharing information. That translates to a potential efficiency loss of £4 billion across the UK network.
"The problem is often not stockpiling of data, it's the reverse - people don't know what a goldmine they're sitting on," said Chris Pritchett, Head of Energy at Foot Anstey. "No one necessarily has a 'right' to energy data, although some market players are becoming more alive to the potential in owning it.
"These players are starting to take steps to ensure it will be placed in their hands. "But we're not advocating that everyone suddenly starts to share everything they have, with no heed to the commercial impact. Instead, we see clusters of strategic partnerships developing and exciting localised projects such as smart cities and microgrids." Utopian The findings are released in the latest Foot Anstey report: Data in Energy Storage: Mine, Mine, Mine. Chris added:
"The projections are utopian, but I don't make any apology for that, as it's important to demonstrate that some of these savings can become real if managed in a sensible and commercial way. Qbots' modelling imagines an ideal scenario where there is complete data sharing. With that scenario, gross benefits of up to £70,000 can be realised for every 1 MW of peak demand.
At a current UK demand of 60 GW this works out as £4 billion per year (see appendix). Qbots co-founder Vijay Natarajan said: "We believe by sharing energy storage data huge benefits can be realised - as we are finding out in our projects in Manchester and Exeter. "This requires more collaboration between tech companies like us, project developers, distributors and energy companies"