Customers and net zero must be at the heart of digital transition

Britain’s energy system is changing. The drive towards net zero is dramatically increasing the number of energy assets (generation, storage, import and demand) across the system, and this is becoming progressively challenging to manage.

Digitalisation of the energy system is critical to ensure that energy assets are integrated to deliver an efficient, stable whole energy system that help energy customers realise the outcomes they need.

The Energy Digitalisation Taskforce, chaired by Laura Sandys and run by the Energy Systems Catapult, has published its final report and recommendations outlining how that can happen in the years ahead.

Our report – Delivering a Digitalised Energy System – puts customer satisfaction and decarbonisation at the heart of its proposals. The report presents six key recommendations, each of which are supported by a series of actions to realise the goal.

• Unlock the value of customer actions and assets
• Deliver interoperability
• Implement new digital governance approach and entities
• Adopt digital security measures
• Enable carbon monitoring and accounting
• Embed a digitalisation culture

Customer actions and assets will be critical to maintain a balanced and stable future energy system. Digitalisation can give customers control and help hide unnecessary complexity.

One of the key actions is to develop an industry-wide portal for customers to manage consent around their energy data. This consent portal would put them in charge of how their information is used, building trust and confidence about who has access to their data and why.

Another of the proposed actions is to mandate smart energy assets – introducing minimum smart hardware requirements for devices that meet certain demand or generation criteria. This will help us to decarbonise at the lowest possible cost, by making use of decentralised flexibility as much as possible rather than costly system upgrades.

A base level of interoperability will be essential in the future energy system; this is why we’re proposing the development of a digital spine for the energy system. Think of it like a thin layer of digital infrastructure that allows every player on the system to talk to one another in the same language – ingesting, standardising and sharing operationally-critical data in near real-time.

With this digital spine, new business entrants would be able to plug-and-play with the energy system, easily accessing and participating in markets. This creates optionality and ensures that we’re able to choose how the energy system operates, rather than being forced into a solution due to inadequate technology.

Our recommendation to enable carbon monitoring and accounting will improve visibility and understanding around the carbon impacts of energy, helping engage customers and inform future policymaking.

Taking forward the taskforce’s recommendations will require coordinated action by government, the regulator Ofgem and industry itself. An independent digital delivery body – another of our recommendations – which is free from vested interests could help coordinate the delivery a lot of the work. This would create space for the required digital infrastructure to be created close to, but outside of, the government.

While digitalisation already underpins a lot of progress we’re seeing in the energy sector, it needs more deeply embedding if we’re to meet our ambitious net zero targets – and it will deliver a major step forward when it is.