Guidance for meter data interoperability in Europe

The European Commission issued guidance on meter data reporting to ensure a consistent and comparable approach in EU countries.

With EU rules foreseeing a new repository on electricity meter data interoperability next year, the guidance is aimed at streamlining the process and ensuring uniformity in the reporting, thereby enhancing the usability of the repository.

In particular, the guidance, which was developed by a joint working group of ENTSO-E and the DSO Entity, is focussed on establishing non-discriminatory and transparent procedures for accessing electricity meter and consumption data, per the implementing regulation 2023/1162 of 6 June 2023.

In terms of the implementing regulation, EU member states are required to carry out and keep up to date a mapping of their respective practices at a national level and to report these to the Commission before 5 January 2025 – and if transitioning to a new national system by 5 July 2026 – for publication in the publicly accessible repository.

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The guidance document reviews three data management models – decentralised data exchange, centralised/national data hub data exchange and hybrid data exchange, essentially a combination of the two previous models – for orientation, although in practice at national level there is an array of blends and variations of these.

Data exchange models

In the decentralised data exchange model, data is stored at the source, e.g. metering information at the DSO or TSO, contract information at the supplier, capability data at distributed energy resources, etc., and systems communicate directly with each other.

An example is the Energy Data Exchange in Austria. Data exchange is done explicitly and consciously between different actors.

In the centralised/national data hub data exchange model, data is sent and stored in the hub. All business processes run on that hub, which is operated and developed by a specific party, and the results are sent back to its client actors.

An example is the data hub established in Finland, Denmark or Poland. In this scenario, much data exchange is done internally within the national data hub.

In the hybrid data exchange model, all market participants communicate in a decentralised manner but in some use cases, there are task-specific central structures.

Data is copied sparingly and only within a specific use case context. Also, there might be a centralised permission administrator and multiple decentralised metered data administrators, like in Spain, where data stays with the DSOs and an additional national platform manages data access.

Based on these the document then presents examples of reporting of national practices, aligned with the ‘reference model’ delineated in the annex of the implementing regulation, along with a template for the reporting.

The four categories of information required include general information on the national market structure and environment and breakdowns of the roles of all relevant parties and the data procedures and information exchanges.

The proposed repository forms part of Europe’s energy digitalisation action plan and is intended to make it easier for electricity suppliers and energy service companies to operate across the internal electricity market, thereby promoting competition in the retail market, while avoiding excessive administrative costs.

It also is intended to foster innovation in energy services, particularly in energy efficiency and renewable energy.