I recently visited the old Philips industrial complex in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It’s where I was invited as a student, along with a group of other young engineers, for a demonstration of the compact disc (CD) player. Phillips had just launched the device and wanted to showcase the innovation. The CD, we were told, could initially not even store the amount of data required for a 60-minute music record. Adding storage meant introducing reading errors and losing out on sound quality. In what seemed like a counterintuitive move at the time, the engineers decided to not just increase storage a little, but to double it. This allowed for the invention of an advanced error correction mechanism that ensured the sound quality was not impacted. The CD-ROM would ultimately store up to 700 MB of data—a groundbreaking innovation, often credited with sparking the digital revolution.

Data is fuelling the future

With the energy transition underway, there is a similar bold “rethink” taking place in the way energy companies view solutions, particularly around managing data. There are a number of reasons for this. Data volumes have increased tremendously in just a few years. An estimated 273 million smart meters are expected to be rolled out by 2023 ; this alone is expected to drive up data volumes by as much as 10,000 times. Simultaneously, the timelines for making this data available have become much shorter. Advanced central market solutions, like the one developed by CGI for Fingrid Datahub Oy , are helping to simplify, speed up and enhance the efficiency of data exchange. However, there is still ground to be covered before the near real-time data requirements of distributed energy resources, balancing and consumer access are met. The frequency of data production by smart devices and sensors […]