Why is the UK moving towards electric vehicles? 

NR: We’re moving towards electric vehicles because of climate change, air quality, and energy security. 

All studies suggest that even on our current grid mix, and taking into account the whole life of the vehicles, electric vehicles have around a third of the emissions of traditional petrol or diesel-powered engines. That will only improve as the grid decarbonises, so they’ll get cleaner in use. Air quality is more of a mixed picture, but electric vehicles have a positive impact on reducing NOx emissions which are a key pollutant.  

From a driver’s point of view, we want this to be a good experience. For an increasing number of people going electric is already a better option than traditional cars.

Although there are higher upfront costs right now, running costs are far lower. For more and more people that cost equation is working. As we get more electric vehicles on the roads, that will follow through into the second-hand market, which is where the majority of people buy their vehicles, meaning there’ll be more cars available at more accessible prices. And if you can charge overnight at home, which around 70% of us can potentially do, you can leave the house with a full battery.

They also offer a great driving experience – like driving as you imagined when you were a kid, with instant acceleration and simple controls. For example, my brother in law isn’t a keen driver because he’s worried about stalling. You can’t stall an electric vehicle. It’s ideal for people who just want to get from A to B.

What are you working on at the moment to improve the experience for electric vehicle drivers? 

NR: On infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges is how you provide chargepoints to people who don’t have off street parking, or who live in a flat. We need to work out how to address that – for example, rapid or on-street charge points nearby. Different solutions are likely to be right for different places

One of the other challenges we’re working on is long distance journeys. Most vehicles have ranges of more than 200 miles which will cover the vast majority of people’s day to day journeys, but there will be times when people want to go further and they expect to be able to do that easily. Take a bank holiday, where people are more likely to travel to see family and will need to charge more away from home. We’re working on getting more charging capacity into motorway service stations, and we’ve set up a Rapid Charging Fund and a Local EV Infrastructure Fund to make sure that charge points are there wherever people need them.  

We’re also working on regulation to make sure the experience for drivers is as good as it can be. We’ve already brought in regulation to make sure all new private chargepoints are smart, and that all new homes have a charger as standard. Next, we’re looking to make sure chargepoints have open access to card and contactless payments, and are completely reliable – we’re looking for 99% reliability for all rapid charge points. Finally, we’re setting new rules to make sure that chargepoints meet accessibility standards so everyone can use them. 

What’s the role of data access in making all of this happen? 

NR: One of the big challenges we’ve seen so far is understanding the patterns of drivers’ demand: where people are parking, how they’re using their vehicles, when and how they’re charging them. Industry and local authorities need better data access to look at energy capacity and grid reinforcement that’s required to put chargepoints where people actually need them. We need to be able to understand where the hotspots of demand are all across the country to meet that demand. 

That is essential for the private motorist, but also for commercial fleets. Making sure that local authorities can easily access the data that helps them predict demand in their area will make sure they understand need, and can make sure charge point supply meets demand. 

Read: how Open Energy can help get electric vehicles on the road 

The other thing better data access can do is give drivers much more of the information they need. If we can make it easier for businesses and local authorities to share data with each other securely and easily, we can get useful data to the public too – for example, where charge points are, what speed they are, how much they cost, whether they’re accessible, and how they can pay for charging. 

We want individuals, businesses, local authorities and central government to have the information that they need at their fingertips so they can have confidence in the transition we’re making as a country to electric vehicles. There’s a future where your car could tell you it’s running low on energy, then suggest a location nearby and tell you whether it’s available. That’s actually a better experience than refuelling at a petrol station is now. None of that will be possible – the charge point nearby, the location information, the availability information – without the data sharing that underpins it. 

Read: How Icebreaker One and OZEV agreed a priority use case

Why did you decide to work in partnership with Icebreaker One on improving data access? 

NR: We wanted to understand more about what’s possible in improving data sharing – looking at user needs in depth with an organisation with an established process. 

Read: Icebreaker One partners with OZEV to roll out more EV charge points 

We want to build expertise and export that to other areas. That’s not just about cars and batteries – it’s also about the systems behind it. There are countless international counterparts who are having the same problems.

This is an international transition and we want to be a leader in this space. There are huge opportunities for the UK in electric vehicles – environmental, industrial and consumer – and levelling up our ability to find, access and share data underpins it all. 

Read: Use case report – electric vehicle on-street chargepoints

A proof-of-concept project between Open Energy and Elexon has already been completed. It integrated ten data sets from the new Elexon Kinnect Insights Solution with Icebreaker One’s Open Energy service. 

The available data initially includes open data sets that provide a forward view of electricity availability from generation and interconnector capacity and historic views of the electricity generation fuel mix. Data consumers can build a picture of where GB electricity has originated from, using the data sets exposed on the platform. 

New data sets

Now that the integration has been established, Elexon plans to make more data available on the Open Energy platform as development of the Kinnect Insights Solution progresses. This may include some shared data sets, which Elexon will manage through the Icebreaker One Trust Framework that enables secure access control.

In addition to providing essential market data, Elexon will also offer its expertise to companies and innovators working with Icebreaker One, helping make use of Elexon’s wealth of data on the wholesale electricity market to develop new products and services.

Speeding up the energy data revolution

Peter Stanley, Director of Digital Operations at Elexon, said: “As the energy industry evolves and develops new products, systems and services to meet net zero targets, we will all increasingly rely on data and data insights. This will mean higher volumes of data running through industry systems, and more market participants interacting with the data. It’s essential that this data is both open and securely managed, in order to facilitate the levels of innovation and change that the industry needs.”

Gavin Starks, CEO and Founder at Icebreaker One, said: “We’re delighted to join forces with Elexon to speed up the UK’s energy data revolution. Enhancing access to and use of Elexon’s data sets through Open Energy will help accelerate our collective mission to unlock access to energy data across the whole of the sector. 

“Better access to data is crucial to delivering net zero – from installing more electric vehicle charge points to adding more renewables to our energy grid. We must modernise the way we share data – but we won’t get there without changing the way we share data. This is why more businesses, public bodies and non-profits are tapping into the power of Open Energy to drive action towards our net zero future.”

Elexon joins other key industry organisations whose data is already indexed with Open Energy, including SSE, Western Power Distribution, and National Grid ESO.  

Explore Open Energy

Icebreaker One aims to open up discussion about how data access can speed up our progress towards net zero, so invited Robbie to share his perspective on open data and the IEA.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) took a first step toward open data on 24 March 2022 as an outcome of its 2022 Ministerial Meeting in Paris. But the destination remains unclear. Is the final objective simply to make the data the IEA collects from governments public, while leaving its legal status dangling? Or is the objective to provide genuinely open data, ideally under Creative Commons Attribution licensing, to ensure the information being made public is robustly usable and reusable by anyone and for any purpose? I favour, as does the open energy modelling community, the more ambitious journey of course, albeit one with doubtless more obstacles en route. 

IEA data is valuable

The IEA collects energy statistics from its member countries and from other nations and then collates and processes this information. These datasets are unique because no other organisation is in a position to readily assemble such data from governmental sources under relatively consistent technical parameters. The datasets are valuable because of their consistency and reach, both geographically and historically. And the datasets are necessary because citizens — on the presumption that democratic processes are to be valued — should by default be able to source the information being used to form and refine policy options free of cost and legally unencumbered. 

The current and tragic Russo-Ukrainian War and ensuing energy crisis only seeks to highlight the urgency of access to the kind of high quality energy sector information that can underpin quality political discourse and robust public policy development. This necessity predates the Ukrainian conflict: the current attempts to liberate the data the IEA assembles began in October 2021 with an open letter from Hannah Ritchie published in the respected journal Nature. Hannah is head of research at Our World in Data based in Oxford, UK. In her letter, Hannah stresses that the process of scrabbling together statistics on the progress of the Covid pandemic and subsequent immunisation rates must not be repeated for energy and sustainability data. 

IEA data and the transition to net-zero

The IEA datasets can serve many potential roles. The application we highlight here is the provision of data that can be used to populate energy system models. By exploring a wide range of scenarios, these computer models can help shed light on a myriad of questions about future energy systems — on how they might work, what their overarching characteristics might be, and indeed whether a set of suggestions being made are even collectively feasible. That final point being all the more important as we turn to fully renewable and operationally agile systems with greater levels of potentially erratic demand-side participation — including asset purchasing decisions, usage patterns, and demand responsiveness (and noting thankfully that social scientists are now contributing expertise). 

So the question of how best and how rapidly to pivot from western dependence on Russian coal, oil, and natural gas is now paramount. Together with the question of how to react if Russia unilaterally elects to curtail supply. Some modelling projects have recently extended their European energy system models to include Ukraine and Moldova (PyPSA for instance) but the availability of suitable national data remains problematic nonetheless. 

What’s next?

The larger issue is, of course, not how to pivot from Russian supply, but how to pivot from fossil fuels entirely. And recently, 50 or so system modellers signed another open letter to the IEA to point out that the cost of failing to identify high performing system trajectories because of incomplete or less accurate information could be astronomical. And in complete contrast to the very modest revenues that the IEA currently receives from selling such information to commercial organisations. 

The IEA’s first attempt at the public licensing of nil cost data was a shambles. In 2021, the IEA published some non-primary datasets under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0-IGO licensing. This particular license is not open, not suited for data (fails to address European database rights), not international, not compatible with material under other licenses, and not current. A bizarre choice really. The Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 addresses these issues head on and is the license most practitioners recommend in this context.

Key advantages of the CC-BY-4.0 are that it grants permission to both use and republish in original or modified form by anybody and for any purpose. And it has also become a de facto standard that then avoids the creation of legally walled‑off data silos through incompatible licensing provisions.

Hopefully the IEA will appoint a navigator for the next steps in its journey toward genuinely open data. What you too can do to help speed this journey: 

• raise the issues with the IEA via social media or other channels 
• raise the issues with your elected representatives 
• support organisations advocating for open data in the energy sector and elsewhere 

Up to 14 million electric vehicles are expected to be on the road by 2030, driven by the phase-out of new petrol and diesel engines from 2030 – a key part of the UK’s net zero strategy.

To address that challenge, the Department for Transport, Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, and Icebreaker One will work together to identify the data infrastructure needed to roll out more charge points.

Access to robust, reliable data

This means the UK will need to roll out thousands more charge points to meet demand – but an installation effort of this scale requires access to robust, reliable data to understand consumer demand and electrical network capacity. 

The partnership will bring together a coalition of industry stakeholders, regulators and decision-makers to support OZEV’s work to open public EV chargepoint data and improve consumer experience. Its ultimate goal will be to develop a data infrastructure for EV charge points that can unlock cost efficiencies, innovation, and help deliver a net-zero future. 

Making it easy to search, access and securely share energy data

The partnership is part of Icebreaker One’s Open Energy programme, which is designed to make it easy to search, access and securely share energy data. Backed by Ofgem and the UK Government, it will bring together data held by thousands of individual organisations and institutions in an open marketplace. 

Currently in its pilot stage, the Open Energy service is being developed based on use cases – like the need to access energy data to install EV charge points – that are designed to address real-world problems put forward by industry stakeholders. 

Gavin Starks, CEO and Founder of Icebreaker One said:

“Electric vehicles are a vital part of the UK’s journey to net zero. Anyone who drives an EV knows that there aren’t yet enough charging stations – what’s less well-known is that rolling out charge points relies on connecting data across organisations. 

“Open Energy enables trusted connections for organisations who need to search, access, and securely share data to install, access and use charge points. We’re delighted to be working with the Department for Transport and Office for Zero Emission Vehicles on a project that will help the UK transform our transport system.”