DATA CELLAR, the future public energy data space of Local Energy Communities

‘Data Hub for the Creation of Energy communities at the Local Level and to Advance Research on them’ (DATA CELLAR) is a new project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme, which is led by RINA Consulting. DATA CELLAR aims to create a public energy data space to support the creation, development, and management of Local Energy Communities (LECs) in the European Union. The project will last three and a half years and will have a budget of almost nine million euros.

Zabala Innovation is leading the Communication and Dissemination of the project. The project is a communication challenge in Zabala’s Energy area and joins other innovation projects such as ROMEO, NESOI, and CIRCUSOL. DATA CELLAR is a strategic project for European innovation and aims to have a global impact.

DATA CELLAR has an international consortium led by RINA Consulting and includes companies and institutions from 15 European countries: Italy (RINA Consulting, Politecnico di Torino, Fondazione Links, IRAN), Greece (Certh, QUE Technologies), Spain (Fundación Circe centro de Investigación de Recursos y Consumos Energéticos, Centro Tecnológico para el Desarrollo en Asturias de las Tecnologías de la Información, Zabala Innovation Spain, Fundación Asturiana de la Energía), Belgium (Ubitech energy, Zabala Innovation Europe), Norway (NODES), Switzerland (Azienda Elettrica di Massagno), France (Commisariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Electricite de France), Portugal (Centre for New Energy technologies, Empresa Municipal de Ambiente de Cascais), Bulgary (Cez Distribution Bulgaria, SETEHCO), Germany (EUNICE Energy Technologies), Ireland (Trilateral Research, ARAN), Netherland (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Noord-Holland), Cyprus (EPL Technology Frontiers Limited, University of Cyprus), Austria (AustriaCard).

Origin of the DATA CELLAR Project

Local Energy Communities (LECs) have been recognised by the European Commission as a key measure to drive the European Union’s energy transition.

At the same time, the digitisation of the EU energy system and the proper exchange of data between energy actors seem crucial to foster the exchange of best practices and the creation of a knowledge community to tackle one of the most urgent global crises of our society: climate change.

DATA CELLAR will launch a collaborative platform that will provide an interoperable, modular, and secure energy data space capable of providing access to consumer data. It will operate through decision support tools and artificial intelligence (AI) models to serve and support LECs.

The final public data space will be easy to populate and easy to interact with, will also ensure seamless integration with other EU energy data spaces, and will provide LEC stakeholders with services and tools to develop their activities.

How DATA CELLAR will be carried out

DATA CELLAR and its services will be used by representatives of nine validation cases around the EU and with different levels of maturity promoted by different types of actors.

The project will also be used to drive cross-cutting activities such as EU energy scenarios and market planning. DATA CELLAR will facilitate the collection of data from both LEC stakeholders, researchers, and tenants, to develop a market and tokenisation reward approach that can stimulate these actors to use and populate the data space.

To this end and taking into account the interaction of the data with other existing EU data spaces or energy initiatives towards the creation of a federated EU energy data space, DATA CELLAR will also explore the ethical, regulatory, cybersecurity, and governance aspects of data management and data governance.