MONITORING & METERING


Gaining insights from interval data represents a hugely


exciting opportunity for the UK and Ireland, not only to better engage customers,


but to support electrification and decarbonisation efforts. Krishnan Kasiviswanathan, chief operating officer,


Innowatts, explains why it is


time for the UK and Ireland to unlock the multiple benefits of ‘interval data’


Interval data enables suppliers to price each customer based on their actual consumption patterns and create differentiation through more accurate subgroupings


Examining the ‘interval data’ journey I


n April, Ofgem set out its timetable to implement market-wide half-hourly settlements with an


expectation for electricity suppliers to transition to meet this requirement by October 2025 – a move that Ofgem predicts could create net benefits for consumers in Great Britain of up to £4.5bn to 2045. In parallel, as the smart meter roll-out


continues at pace, billions of meter level interval data elements start to become available on a daily basis. But, while interval data is not new, most energy suppliers are not able to leverage the data with the intent and purpose to optimise operational value across their businesses. Placed in the right hands, and with the right


tools, this data can be leveraged to provide better engagement with customers and tailor products and services to each consumers’ specific needs, while simultaneously encouraging market flexibility in support of the energy transition to a net zero carbon economy. However, it takes time and resources to develop the


infrastructure and intelligence necessary to analyse and act upon half-hourly meter data in a meaningful financial and operational way. That said, there are several possible quick wins that energy suppliers can gain by leveraging insights and learnings from implementation of interval data in the US. These insights could be invaluable for accelerating the United Kingdom and Ireland’s journey. Notwithstanding the remaining European continent.


BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE While every supplier now has interval data, most do not have the data infrastructure or available resources to gain in-depth insights and intelligence to make informed and reliable actions from it. Determining what data and insights to collect is a complex but necessary first step. A robust and scalable infrastructure, with the


intent to drive toward the outcomes intended, also needs to be put in place in order to import data; run diagnostics; complete and validate curation of the data; then identify and fill any inherit gaps to subsequently reconcile the data


10


elements to understand whether the interval data matches at the system level. Once customer profiles are analysed on a half


hourly basis, suppliers can significantly improve their forecasting, pricing and risk management operational tactics, identifying ways to improve customer engagement and tailoring products suitable for each customer and market segment. Suppliers who are slower to react, and wait until 2025 to implement the aforementioned capabilities and infrastructure, place their competitive advantage – and their relationships with the customer – at risk.


REBUILDING PROFILES AND FORECASTS Although the industry has reasonable insight into how seasonal and extreme weather impacts consumer behaviour, as supply and demand become more unpredictable it pays to have a more detailed understanding. Electricity prices are one of the most financially


volatile commodities on the planet. The recent outages and price spikes in Texas, and the weather events in the Pacific Northwest, illuminated the importance of having visibility of, and the ability to analyse, interval data in real time. With the capability to improve consumer profiling


and demand, forecasts tools such as the Innowatts platform help energy suppliers become more resilient to extreme weather and other related events that impact their customers and the corelated positions and pricing they take in the markets they serve. During the extreme weather events in Texas


which caused rolling blackouts and power shortages, Innowatts applied its AI-driven algorithms to meter data, in near real-time, to identify and illuminate customers that had been wrongly categorised as gas heating only, when electric heating was their principle source. Innowatts was also able to predict and highlight that customers in southern Texas would create a surge in demand as the temperature dropped and would use temporary heaters to keep warm. The energy suppliers were able to then re-profile these customers to create a much more accurate forecast and procurement


ENERGY MANAGEMENT - Autumn 2021


strategy for the day ahead. A more accurate day ahead forecast vastly


improves the energy supplier’s ability to hedge their market positions, thereby reducing pricing exposure on the spot market – where wholesale electricity prices soared to $9,500 per MWh. Several suppliers with less accurate forecasts found themselves at the mercy of the spot market. Eventually unable to make the necessary payments to participate, they were barred – which in turn left thousands of Texans without power. Ultimately, the catastrophe and the sky-high


prices led several suppliers to file for bankruptcy. However, this is a situation that could have been avoided if those suppliers had collated and analysed previous years’ interval data to produce consumer insights to improve demand forecasts. However, while the UK and Ireland’s weather may


not typically be quite so extreme, the volatility and unpredictability of the grid can be. More complex forecasting models will help energy suppliers better understand usage and plan for the future today.


THE TRANSITION TO ELECTRIC HEATING AND THE IMPACT OF RENEWABLE ENERGY Alongside weather events, decarbonisation and policy changes are also impacting consumer demand profiles, with an example being the proliferation of ‘behind the meter’ distributed energy. While a welcome trend, it still took energy suppliers in California several years to collect enough seasonal data to fully understand the impact of solar PV on a household’s electricity supply, observe how dramatically this could change from one interval to the next and establish how to accommodate it across its portfolio. These factors remain a primary problem that has yet to be fully understood or solved. This is particularly important in the context of


the UK’s forthcoming deployment of electric heating – and the 600,000 heat pumps installs per annum we can expect by 2028 – from which new patterns of consumer behaviour will emerge. Interval data will be crucial for tracking and forecasting this trend, hence enabling suppliers to


www.energymanagementmag.co.uk


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36