Energy data is crucial for utility operations, regulatory compliance, consumer transparency, and integrating new solutions to address regional and global issues. In Ontario, the Green Button and Electronic Business Transaction standards have tried to help improve data accessibility and management. There has been no formal review of data accuracy and consistency by utilities, policy makers or regulators. Its time for us all to get together and help. see https://energycentral.com/c/iu/bridging-data-gaps-energy-sector-case-study-utility-bill-verification-ontario .
Lack of access to standardized, digital energy billing and meter information significantly hampers research and innovation in the energy sector. Smart grid technology and performance-based algorithms are hindered without accurate, granular data. This creates challenges for local and global markets to interconnect systems.
Everyone is looking for a “silver bullet” to optimize energy usage and develop effective energy management strategies. Ontario, Canada, is a “perfect storm” of complexity in managing the “source of truth” for energy data. With over 50 electric and natural gas utilities, varying in size from thousands to millions of meter points, no utility uses the exact same infrastructure, as legacy Customer Information Systems (CIS) and Meter Data Stores (ODS/MDM or MDM/R) have evolved for specific utility use cases over time.
