The workpackage number three (WP3) in the Big Data project is running a pilot study on electricity smart meters data. The aim of the pilot study is to demonstrate the use of electricity meters which can be read from a distance and measure electricity consumption at a high frequency to official statistics. The possible areas where this kind of data can be of use is for the production of energy statistics but it can be relevant also as a additional source at calculating census housing statistics, household costs, impact on environment, statistics about energy production.
Contents
Description of the work package
Aim of this pilot is to demonstrate by concrete estimates whether buildings equipped with smart meters ( = electricity meters which can be read from a distance and measure electricity consumption at a high frequency) can be used to produce energy statistics but can also be relevant as a supplement for other statistics e.g. census housing statistics, household costs, impact on environment, statistics about energy production. Challenges ahead with this dataset are: representativity issues, linkage to other datasets, privacy concerns. Another challenge with smart data is that these are currently available in a few countries only, but will be available in several countries before 2020. Second aim of this workpackage is to relate the results of this pilot to future use in other countries.
Where possible, the pilot builds on earlier results obtained in this area, such as Swedish results on access to energy data.
Methodological, quality and technical results of the work package, including intermediate findings, will be used as inputs for the envisaged WP 8 of SGA-2, in case SGA-2 will be realized. When carrying out the tasks listed below, care will be taken that these results will be stored for later use, by using the facilities described at WP 9.
Tasks
Task 1 – Data access
Description of the current status and future perspectives regarding the availability of smart meters in the partner countries. Overview of data holders/owners in the partner countries. Assessment of legal aspects regarding the access to the data and linking data to other data sources. Technological requirements (software and hardware) needed to deal with this type of data.
Participating countries: EE, AT, DK, SE
Task 2 – Data handling
Description of the available data (structure, records, attributes). Assessment of the current coverage (households and businesses) and expected coverage in the near future.Processing raw fata and transforming it into cleaned datasets to be used in the next tasks.
Participating countries: EE, DK
Task 3 – Methodology and techniques
Linking smart meters data with administrative data
Description of the linking process to different administrative sources. For each data source the following information is given: data source description, linking methodology, problems encountered, linking rate and other quality information. Overview of IT-infrastructure used in the linking process, recommendations based on the experiences.
Participating countries: EE, DK
Methodology to produce electricity consumption statistics - businesses
Description of the procedure of processing the data from raw data to processed data to final estimates. If feasible, combining smart meters data with survey data to improve survey estimates is studied. Quality assessment of the processed data (processing and measurement errors) and final estimates (validity of the concepts, timeliness, comparability, coherence) is carried out. Visualisation of the results.
Participating countries: EE, DK
Methodology to produce electricity consumption statistics - households
Description of the procedure of processing the data from raw data to processed data to final estimates. Quality assessment of the processed data (processing and measurement errors) and final estimates (validity of the concepts, timeliness, comparability, coherence).
Participating countries: EE, DK
Methodology to produce estimates of seasonally vacant living spaces
Description of the procedure of processing the data from raw data to processed data to final estimates. If feasible, smart meters data in combination with population register data is used to model the person’s main residence indicator. Quality assessment of the processed data (processing and measurement errors) and final estimates (validity of the concepts, timeliness, comparability, coherence). Visualisation of the results.
Participating countries: EE
Produce synthetic dataset where different extimation methods can be tested and results compared It is a useful tool in case of incomplete or unrepresentative real data and in case of limited data access.
Participating countries: AT
Task 4 – Future perspectives (foreseen in SGA-2)
Potential new statistical products
Relying on the results from Tasks 1-3 study of the potential usage of generated datasets in the domain of energy consumption or in other statistical domains is carried out. Discussion on the international comparability of the new products and ways to improve comparability.
Feasibility of the use of low level aggregated data
Overview of the different ways to aggregate the raw data and produce statistics from low level aggregated data. Assessment of the quality and costs in micro vs macro data comparison. (Input to Deliverable 3.3)
Recommendations
Based on the experiences acquired while carrying out Tasks 1-4, a list of recommendations regarding access, IT-infrastructure, methodology, data processing, and output quality is given. (Input to Deliverable 3.4)
Deliverables (SGA-1 only)
3.1 | Report about data access and data handling | month 6 |
3.2 | Report about producing statistics with smart meters data (methodology and first results) | month 18 |
Milestones (SGA-1 only)
3.3 | Progress and technical report of first internal WP-meeting | month 4 |
3.4 | Progress and technical report of second internal WP-meeting | month 9 |