With our two biggest-ever customer and community energy data projects wrapping up on 30 June, after years of collaborative work, Wattwatchers is highly focused on what a secure marketplace for ethically-sourced real-time energy data will look like. Our Chief Innovation Officer Grace Young’s recent presentation at the Energy NEXT industry event (Sydney, 19 July 2023) explored the challenges of striking a balance between open + proprietary, industry + customer, and privacy. Watch the video!
Around the world there is growing recognition that electricity grids of the near future will be heavily data-driven to allow millions of consumer energy resources—like rooftop solar and home EV chargers—to be integrated effectively.
Wattwatchers is a leading Australian digital energy platform at the cutting edge of capturing, hosting and securely sharing customer and community electricity data—both real-time and historical trend data—through our solutions and also through our major grant projects, which include:
My Energy Marketplace (MEM, 2019–2023): a $9.6 million project supported by a grant of up to $2.7 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which has created a major new ‘energy dataset’ for the energy transition and electrification that monitors over 5100 homes and other sites around Australia. The MEM is now open for business, with ethically-sourced data from the MEM already being used by leading Australian research institutions including top universities and the CSIRO, and also by app and other solution developers.
MyTown Microgrid Heyfield (2020–2023): a $1.8 million project exploring the feasibility of a microgrid or other local energy solutions, such as community batteries and load flexibility, for the historic timber town of Heyfield in Victoria’s Gippsland region. It was co-led by Wattwatchers with the Heyfield Community Resource Centre and the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, with grant funding from the Australian Government’s Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund (RRCRF) and the Victorian Government’s Latrobe Valley Authority (LVA).
In her presentation, Grace delves into three key focus areas that need to be addressed for a successful marketplace for energy data, with ‘security’ a key aspect of each step of the journey:
- Collection: including engagement, legals, installation, maintenance and security.
- Connectivity: including cost, reliability, timeliness and security.
- Sharing: including security, privacy and opt-in access.
You can see Grace’s Energy NEXT presentation on our YouTube channel here.
More reading
Also read related articles quoting Grace on energy data security and cybersecurity matters:
PV Magazine – Two-part cybersecurity series in June 2023 Part 1 & Part 2
Renew Economy – Article published in July 2023
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The My Energy Marketplace project is receiving funding from ARENA as part of ARENA’s Advancing Renewables Program. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Australian Government, and the Australian Government does not accept responsibility for any information or advice contained herein.
