some domain-wide data projects / feedback sought

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Robbie Morrison

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Feb 18, 2021, 9:57:54 AM2/18/21
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Hello all

I am collecting together some domain‑wide data projects for an upcoming presentation and perhaps later a paper on community data.

And here is the draft slide:

[some-domain-wide-data-projects]

If your project has been omitted, misrepresented or otherwise mangled or maligned, could you please reply?  Despite the final remark, that would include LOD projects as well.  Either onlist or offlist.  And details of any citable publications would help too.

Nice to see a couple of overarching projects covering semantic and metadata. And just stepping back for a moment too, are there any large holes that this community or energy analysts more generally need to address.  (Aside from getting proper data licenses onto statutory reporting within Europe and the United Kingdom.)

TIA, Robbie

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Phone: +49.30.612-87617

Barrows, Clayton

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Feb 18, 2021, 11:16:12 AM2/18/21
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Hi Robbie,

This looks like it will be an interesting/valuable presentation, and thanks for including PowerSystems.jl. I just want to clarify that PowerSystems.jl is a data management utility. We provide interfaces to parse infrastructure parameters and time series data, help ensure consistency, efficiently access data, and make some basic calculations (Ybus, PTDF, basic power flow). We don’t claim to provide the data itself. However, we have put together a library of datasets (from other sources) that have been compiled for PowerSystems.jl in the PowerSystemCaseBuilder.jl package. If you have more questions, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

Clayton

 

From: openmod-i...@googlegroups.com <openmod-i...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Robbie Morrison <robbie....@posteo.de>
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Subject: [openmod-initiative] some domain-wide data projects / feedback sought

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Robbie Morrison

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Feb 19, 2021, 11:40:44 AM2/19/21
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Hello again all

Thanks to those who offered feedback on and off‑list.  I have split the table into three slides as follows — noting that the screenshots are now stripped together for convenience.

Am still seeking feedback.  And particularly on omissions!

(Also a credit to many on this email list that have worked hard on community data — none of these projects are easy.)

[domain-wide-data-projects-draft-02]

with best wishes, Robbie

dan.t...@sheffield.ac.uk

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Feb 24, 2021, 7:08:25 AM2/24/21
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Hi Robbie,

 

This project to map the UK grid assets isn’t a community project, but is very interesting and exciting in terms of its potential to deliver much better information on the grid.

https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/new-digital-system-map-to-harness-the-power-of-data-to-deliver-net-zero

 

Regards,

Dan

 

 

From: openmod-i...@googlegroups.com <openmod-i...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Robbie Morrison
Sent: 18 February 2021 14:58
To: openmod list <openmod-i...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openmod-initiative] some domain-wide data projects / feedback sought

 

Hello all

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Zane Selvans

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Feb 24, 2021, 9:02:40 AM2/24/21
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I think Greg's consulting company is "Carbon Impact Consulting" not "Carbon Index Consulting"

I don't know if it's the kind of thing you're trying to highlight, but you might want to include the Open Energy Outlook. The project had a Commentary piece in Joule recently.

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Robbie Morrison

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Feb 24, 2021, 1:04:03 PM2/24/21
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Hello Zane, all

I just added Open Energy Outlook to the slides and confirmed the wording with Joe DeCarolis.  Thanks for the suggestion.

The paper by Joe you indicated mentions several European Commission initiatives, namely SET-NAV, openENTRANCE, SENTINEL, Spine, and EMP‑E, as examples of well‑founded and well‑resourced research programs.  Quite a few on list list are involved, so you might be interested in Joe's comments from a US perspective.

  • DeCarolis, Joseph F, Paulina Jaramillo, Jeremiah X Johnson, David L McCollum, Evelina Trutnevyte, David C Daniels, Gökçe Akın-Olçum, Joule Bergerson, Soolyeon Cho, Joon-Ho Choi, Michael T Craig, Anderson R de Queiroz, Hadi Eshraghi, Christopher S Galik, Timothy G Gutowski, Karl R Haapala, Bri-Mathias Hodge, Simi Hoque, Jesse D Jenkins, Alan Jenn, Daniel J A Johansson, Noah Kaufman, Juha Kiviluoma, Zhenhong Lin, and Heather L MacLean (16 December 2020). "Leveraging open-source tools for collaborative macro-energy system modeling efforts"30510-9). Joule. 4 (12): 2523–2526. ISSN 2542-4785. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.11.002.  Open access.

with best wishes, Robbie

Robbie Morrison

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Feb 26, 2021, 7:50:20 AM2/26/21
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Hello all

Embedded below is the final table — and you should be able to extract the PNG at 2000 × 2418 px resolution. The Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license is in the file metadata.

[openmod-domain-wide-data-projects-04]

While most of the projects listed have been in the planning pipeline for some time, it is nice to see them now out in the daylight and seeking community input and usage.

The two high‑level projects are vitally important — covering semantics and metadata.  Of the infrastructure projects, I am going to highlight the LOD–GEOSS project using linked open data concepts and based on the DBpedia Databus project. Being able to utilize smart federated data systems will be quite a step forward.

My thanks to all who contributed suggestions and bug reports and later checked my phrasing.  Much appreciated.

The background webinar hosted by Newcastle University will be up on the web somewhere in due course.

A comment on the United Kingdom and data licensing more generally. Despite one suggestion, I was unable to include any data projects originating there. The UK appears to be diverging from the European Union in relation to the preferred legal treatment of non‑personal public energy sector information. There is official recognition in Europe on the merits of regarding such data as a public good — to drive both transparency and opportunity. (Admittedly after the JRC had a good crack at trying to create a novel industrial data right.) The UK seems to be treading some line between "presumed open" and "start from open" and a "data openness triage" process without specifying the terms or referring to any known open data licenses — see for instance, Sandys et al (2019). Rather, the UK appears to be leaning toward non‑disclosure agreements, brokerage although not necessarily monetary (withing consortia, for instance), and possibly trading.  Admittedly three years back, Howgego (2017) reports on a similar ethos that led to the third party use of postcodes being banned (quoting from New Scientist):

That's because Royal Mail and the government‑owned firm Ordnance Survey own the authoritative geocoded lists of postcodes and addresses in the UK. Royal Mail, now privatised, makes about £30 million a year by licensing the data to firms ranging from couriers to insurance brokers, says Peter Wells, head of policy at the non‑profit Open Data Institute in London. That means Royal Mail has a clear interest in defending its intellectual property. "They sent us nastygrams telling us to cease and desist — so we did," says Pope.

In this context, the United Kingdom has unfortunately a "sweat of the brow" threshold for copyright. In contrast, degree of effort does not apply in United States where some minimal level of creativity is required — with long‑running litigation over phone books, starting with Feist, having established their unprotected status. In addition, database protection (separate from copyright) does apply in both the UK and Europe, although again not in the US (despite three attempt to introduce such legislation). Even if UK datasets could attract some form of intellectual property protection, it would seem useful to push for data‑capable open licensing as a matter of policy.  Unless and until, database projects in the UK — or equally the EEA for that matter — carry CC‑BY‑4.0 or CC0‑1.0 licenses (or something inbound compatible), their utility to this community remains approximately zero.

It is the potential copyright holder or database owner who determines the licensing.  If someone adds a public license to material not protected, no liability arises.  Rather, users are able to simply disregard that license.  The problem is uncertainty — were the thresholds for copyright or database protection met or not?  It is impossible to tell by examining a single CSV file, for instance. These questions do not exist in the United States — moreover work produced by federal employees is automatically public domain, whether creative or not.  Energy system modelers in the US are clearly at an advantage in terms of access to legally unencumbered information about the systems they work with.

with best wishes, Robbie

References

Howgego, Joshua (5 August 2017). "Getting on the map: how to fix the problem with addresses". New Scientist. 235 (3137): 30–32. ISSN 0262-4079.

Morrison, Robbie (26 February 2021). Open energy system models: overview, community, legal context, emerging infrastructure — Release 02. Online presentation to School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom on 25 February 2021.

Sandys, Laura, Richard Dobson, Eric Brown, Gordon Graham, Rebecca Lane, and Jake Verma (12 June 2019). Energy Data Taskforce: a strategy for a modern digitalised energy system. Birmingham, United Kingdom: Energy Systems Catapult.


On 24/02/2021 19.03, Robbie Morrison wrote:

Hello Zane, all

I just added Open Energy Outlook to the slides and confirmed the wording with Joe DeCarolis.  Thanks for the suggestion.

The paper by Joe you indicated mentions several European Commission initiatives, namely SET-NAV, openENTRANCE, SENTINEL, Spine, and EMP‑E, as examples of well‑founded and well‑resourced research programs.  Quite a few on list list are involved, so you might be interested in Joe's comments from a US perspective.

  • DeCarolis, Joseph F, Paulina Jaramillo, Jeremiah X Johnson, David L McCollum, Evelina Trutnevyte, David C Daniels, Gökçe Akın-Olçum, Joule Bergerson, Soolyeon Cho, Joon-Ho Choi, Michael T Craig, Anderson R de Queiroz, Hadi Eshraghi, Christopher S Galik, Timothy G Gutowski, Karl R Haapala, Bri-Mathias Hodge, Simi Hoque, Jesse D Jenkins, Alan Jenn, Daniel J A Johansson, Noah Kaufman, Juha Kiviluoma, Zhenhong Lin, and Heather L MacLean (16 December 2020). "Leveraging open-source tools for collaborative macro-energy system modeling efforts"30510-9). Joule. 4 (12): 2523–2526. ISSN 2542-4785. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.11.002.  Open access.

with best wishes, Robbie

On 24/02/2021 15.01, Zane Selvans wrote:
I think Greg's consulting company is "Carbon Impact Consulting" not "Carbon Index Consulting"

I don't know if it's the kind of thing you're trying to highlight, but you might want to include the Open Energy Outlook. The project had a Commentary piece in Joule recently.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:57 AM Robbie Morrison <robbie....@posteo.de> wrote:

Hello all

I am collecting together some domain‑wide data projects for an upcoming presentation and perhaps later a paper on community data.

And here is the draft slide:

<snip: prior table>

Robbie Morrison

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Mar 30, 2021, 5:20:12 PM3/30/21
to openmod-i...@googlegroups.com

Hello all

The chart showing domain‑wide data projects has now migrated to the openmod forum for more exposure:

As always, any and all feedback is most welcome.

And my heartfelt thanks to all who provided suggestions and the various project teams who checked their entries and answered my questions.

Not the subject of the forum posting but not unrelated.  Yesterday I attended a presentation from EPRI to the LF Energy project on data architectures.  Despite extensive technical development, providing statutory reporting as a functional requirement was not even considered, let alone supported.  I think the electricity industry is unaware of how much public information disclosure will be expected going forward, how much public policy input will be required to reshape the sector, and how much investment in pubic trust will be needed to improve public acceptance for the many projects, large and small, that lie ahead.

with best wishes, Robbie 

On 26/02/2021 13.50, Robbie Morrison wrote:

Hello all

Embedded below is the final table — and you should be able to extract the PNG at 2000 × 2418 px resolution. The Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license is in the file metadata.

<snip>

Jack Kelly

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Mar 31, 2021, 6:00:36 AM3/31/21
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The chart showing domain-wide data projects looks great!  One tiny suggestion (for UK readers) would be to explicitly state that the Open Energy Family is distinct from the Icebreaker One Open Energy project in the UK (people may get confused by the almost identical names of the two projects!)

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Robbie Morrison

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Mar 31, 2021, 7:52:07 AM3/31/21
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Hi Jack

Will do.  Thanks for the suggestion.  The same question came up at my recent webinar at Newcastle University.  The phrase "open energy" is a bit overloaded in the computer science sense at least.

By the way, I contributed to the Icebreaker One Open Energy project through an advisory group during their phase two development.  And I am enthusiastic about that project.  For those not aware, the IB1 OE project is building a data brokerage platform that fits somewhere between individually‑negotiated bilateral usage agreements and genuinely open data.  While noting that open licensing is not suitable for information under personal or commercial privacy.  IB1 call their instruments preemptive contracts and these are then set within a governance and accreditation framework.  The Icebreaker One work is leading edge and full marks to Gavin Starks and team.

On the other hand, I have watched the German‑based Open Energy project develop from a database, then to a platform, and now a family.  I think I would advise some restraint at this point! :)

Robbie

Robbie Morrison

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Apr 1, 2021, 5:05:40 AM4/1/21
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Hello all again

This discourse topic (their name for a thread) now has some tables containing project URLs:

Screenshot below for reference.

Could those projects listed confirm their URLs please?  Much appreciated!  And if you see anything else you would like changed, please let me know too.

with best wishes, Robbie

[domain-wide-data-project-urls-screenshot]
On 30/03/2021 23.20, Robbie Morrison wrote:

Hello all

The chart showing domain‑wide data projects has now migrated to the openmod forum for more exposure:

As always, any and all feedback is most welcome.

And my heartfelt thanks to all who provided suggestions and the various project teams who checked their entries and answered my questions.

Not the subject of the forum posting but not unrelated.  Yesterday I attended a presentation from EPRI to the LF Energy project on data architectures.  Despite extensive technical development, providing statutory reporting as a functional requirement was not even considered, let alone supported.  I think the electricity industry is unaware of how much public information disclosure will be expected going forward, how much public policy input will be required to reshape the sector, and how much investment in pubic trust will be needed to improve public acceptance for the many projects, large and small, that lie ahead.

with best wishes, Robbie 

On 26/02/2021 13.50, Robbie Morrison wrote:

Hello all

Embedded below is the final table — and you should be able to extract the PNG at 2000 × 2418 px resolution. The Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license is in the file metadata.

<snip>
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Phone: +49.30.612-87617
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