A Framework for Enabling Cloud Services to Leverage Energy Data

Abstract

Cloud services have been well integrated into various sectors of contemporary societies such as transportation, healthcare, and work. However, the energy sector has made little progress in offering cloud services to energy consumers. In some cases, even basic features (such as energy consumption monitoring and visualization of households) are still unattainable. To foster innovation in cloud-based energy services, governments implement regulations that moderate access to energy data via the energy providers' platforms. Despite these regulations, cloud service providers may still struggle to aggregate energy data because each energy provider may be using different procedures, authentication mechanisms, and data semantics. Consequently, aggregating energy data at scale becomes challenging, as it requires achieving compatibility with diverse platforms. To address this challenge, we propose a cloud-based framework that handles all interactions with energy providers and prepares the data for further processing by services. Additionally, we analyze the socioeconomic impact of our approach, and we outline novel use cases that may emerge due to the proposed framework.