New Data Portal Helps to Find Options for Increasing Efficiency of Energy Use

Elering, Elektrilevi, VKG Soojus, Estonian Renewable Energy Association and Ericsson Eesti are developing the Estfeed smart energy network data portal, the objective of which is to offer to the market partners options for increasing efficiency of energy use.

Through the Estfeed data exchange portal, network operators, producers and consumers can communicate more smoothly with each other, analyse the collected energy consumption data and make them more easily comprehensible and available for the end user.

According to Taavi Veskimägi, Chairman of the Management Board of Elering, such more efficient data exchange will help to make the possibilities of the open electricity market more easily available to all stakeholders in the market, including consumers. “Having more information about actual needs allows for more balanced and sustainable energy use saving on energy costs,“ Veskimägi said.

The first applications for the better understanding of data flow will be created by 2015 at the latest. The solution offered by Elering will help to bring together numerous energy consumers interested in active participation in the electricity market, who would jointly be equal partners and competitors to other market stakeholders.

Using the Elektrilevi solution, people without an education in energetics will be able to make more informed and practical decisions related to the capacity of the main circuit breaker in their place of consumption; the solution of VKG Soojus can detect energy losses related to heat consumption and the solution of the Renewable Energy Association will help to consolidate micro-producers of electricity from renewable energy sources into a so-called virtual power plant, in order to facilitate common operation on the electricity market.

In the future, the Estfeed data portal will be also opened to any other developers seeking to offer new services based on the available data flow, which would make energy use more efficient. As energy consumption data can be integrated with other databases, the number of possible uses is very high.

Estfeed is a project led by Elering and financed from the Norwegian support programme, involving stakeholders from the energy infrastructure side as well as producers and consumers, aiming to make the data related to energy consumption comprehensible and available for end users.