INESC TEC contributes to the creation of the Energy Data Space for Europe

Over the next three years, the project ENERSHARE – European commoN EneRgy dataSpace framework enabling data sHaring-driven Across- and beyond- eneRgy sErvices-, with the INESC TEC as partner, will develop a reference architecture that facilitates data sharing in the energy sector.

The main goal is the creation of a common data space at European level, while improving on the one hand, the interoperability, assurance, value and governance models of energy sector data and, on the other hand, the development of digital energy and non-energy services based on data sharing along the value chain. The European Commission granted €8M to fund the project, within the Horizon Europe programme.

These new services will ensure the improvement in the energy, financial and technical efficiencies of renewable energy communities and a better integration of other sectors (e.g., electric mobility), and energy vectors, like hydrogen.

By June 2025, through the installation of seven pilots, the ENERSHARE project consortium will lay the foundations for the configuration of the Energy Data Space for Europe, in line with relevant European Union initiatives, i.e., GAIA-X, IDSA, BDVA, ETIP SNET and BRIDGE. The project will also promote equal conditions for data sharing.

INESC TEC is responsible for coordinating the development of new distributed intelligence techniques, new services and digital twins. “The patented algorithms of distributed and federated learning, and the blockchain-based platform for the data market, developed by INESC TEC, will be improved and applied to different use cases”, explained Ricardo Bessa. According to the coordinator of the Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES), said use cases include those related to renewable energy production, energy communities, operation of power grids, multi-energy systems and energy efficiency.

INESC TEC will also work on the extending the semantic interoperability techniques, based on the word developed within the scope of the European project InterConnect. “We will also work on features related to assurance, to ensure privacy and confidentiality, sovereignty and total control of data”, explained Fábio Coelho. According to the researcher at INESC TEC’s High-assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab), the project will explore federated identity control technologies applied to connectors for the data space, in order to coordinate data sharing and the creation of new digital services and business models.

The ENERSHARE project is coordinated by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. (Italy), and it brings together 30 partners from 12 European countries – Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Greece, France, Slovenia, Latvia, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In addition to INESC TEC, Smart Energy Lab and R&D Nester are the other Portuguese institutions part of the consortium.