On Tuesday, 5 November 2019, we hosted our sixth Engagement Day, ElectraLink Host: Central Solutions for a Fast-Evolving Utilities Market in Westminster. We were delighted with the impressive turnout, widespread participation and positive feedback from attendees. We also received a considerable amount of specific feedback on a range of topics, presentations, panels and industry concerns from the event.
Attendees provided feedback throughout the day, especially during the roundtable sessions. The roundtable discussion around empowering consumers and networks to deliver the energy transition revealed that attendees agreed that transformation was proving a challenge with data access, security and quality identified as potential barriers to innovation and transforming areas of the industry.
Consumer behaviour, in terms of green interests, was also challenging the complicated nature of the market. Ultimately, collaboration and working together – along with consumer engagement, incentives and investment in digital solutions – were touted as vital actions if the industry is to keep up with the requirements of consumers, regulations and Net Zero.
The roundtable on using existing infrastructure to address future challenges was preceded by presentations on how ElectraLink’s Energy Market Data Hub (EMDH), including the existing Data Transfer Service (DTS), is being used to develop FlowBuilder and CSSConnect to address a plethora of industry data transfer requirements. Attendees acknowledged varied awareness of FlowBuilder and CSSConnect. However, more industry engagement was encouraged and with support from evidence-based cases, workshops, examples and webinars to fully communicate how these solutions can help businesses.
During the day’s panel sessions, we also collected questions and comments from attendees through Sli.do, a web-based audience engagement platform, and did our best to ensure the panellists responded to as many submissions as possible. However, attendees sent through several dozen questions and comments which panellists were unable to respond to on the day.
Energy market experts from ElectraLink’s various business areas (as well as one of our keynote speakers, Kaija Valdmaa from Elering AS in Estonia) have responded to the remaining Sli.do submissions to give our respective stances on a range of topics. These include the DNO-DSO transition, international experiences in energy data transparency, the EMDH, the role of data in governance and code management, and concerns at the forefront of the market’s transformation.
We have produced a more detailed report, including challenges faced by industry; recommendations on the EMDH, FlowBuilder and CSSConnect; and all the Sli.do questions and comments within our remit. You can view and download the full report here.
Our next Engagement Day will take place in Q2 of 2020. Please follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for updates, reminders and announcements.
If you have any questions or comments for our teams, or suggestions of your own on how we can improve our services, please email [email protected] and we will pass your queries to the relevant person.