At Xtra-energy, our mojo is “Turn renewable data into action”.

Why is that? Because, like many others, Renewable Energy Producers face a major challenge: data! So we thought it might be interesting to share our vision of this challenge in a few posts.

First, let’s dig down to the roots of this observation. As we mentioned, Renewable Energy Producers face a data challenge. On the one hand, data volumes are growing exponentially and on the other hand there are more and more data types and data sources.

And by data we don’t only mean technical data: by data we mean all data related to daily portfolio management and that are necessary on a day-to-day basis. Which means:

• Technical data (of course) but also
• Contractual data: data contained in documents, mainly pdfs
• Energy markets data: data published by Power Exchanges, Transmission and Distribution System Operators (TSOs and DSOs)
• Financial data coming from accounting systems and finance ERPs

As an intro you could argue that producing electricity has always been a data challenge that conventional producers have been facing for many years. Balancing a grid on a real time basis is a data challenge, balancing a balance responsible perimeter has always been a data challenge… And you would be right!

But let’s say that up to recently, Renewable Energy Producers had little involvement in this challenge which was rather in the hands of TSOs, DSOs and the (very) long term buyers of Renewable Energy (Offtakers). At first, back in the 2000s, the deal was that Renewable Energy Producers were in charge to create a new industry. So they should not be polluted by any other concern than building new power plants. But things have changed: wind and solar industries are now mature industries and the focus is a bit different.

So why are Renewable Energy Producers facing this problem today? To make it simple, we could argue that data has become a challenge to address because of two factors:

• The ongoing Energy Transition
• The development of Market based revenues for Renewable Energy Producers

In our next post, we will focus on the first factor: ongoing Energy Transition factor!

Stay connected 🙂