Big Data and energy: How are they related?
The recapitulation, storage and processing of data has positive implications for the energy industry. Here we tell you about them.
Low power consumption light bulb that supports economic sustainability with energy savings
Every commercial user with high electricity consumption can benefit from certain tangible energy attributes. Such as digital meters, current power, solar cells, long-life light bulbs, among others. However, behind all this innovation there is a trend of huge importance.
We are talking about Big Data and all the opportunities it offers to achieve economic sustainability goals. Although it is already well known by a large part of the industry, there is another part that is unaware of all its benefits in the current era. Therefore, here we will focus on explaining the implications of combining data recapitulation with the energy industry.
What do we mean by Big Data?
We will understand this term as the creation, collection, storage and processing of data generated by certain practices, for example, energy consumption. And although it might be thought that the simple action of creating a list of active customers and adding their contact data results in a Big Data practice, the correct practice is more complex. The data handled must comply with 3 variables:
Volume: data is too big for everyday software. We are talking about an amount close to tens of terabytes (thousand gigabytes) or hundreds of petabytes (thousand terabytes).
- Speed: data must be handled with great digital speed. Currently, there are technological products that facilitate data in real time, for example, digital meters.
- Variety: one, two or five fields of information are not enough. The data are abundant in their typology, and may include various formats such as text, images, videos and others.
How does this help economic sustainability?
All private companies and public organizations will find high value in integrating Big Data practices into their workflows as it will provide innovative solutions to today's energy challenges. Let's talk about a tangible example to clarify the possibilities:
Nowadays, all companies measure the energy consumption of their branches. This gives the number of amperes spent and, therefore, the price to be paid. But could this metric improve?
With good information processing, companies could collect information from each branch and detect which ones spend more amps than others, they could even detect the reason why a certain branch requires more energy. Could we have a better reading?
If the 3Vs are met, a company could analyse the amps needed to operate normally in a certain region, it would know when it requires more energy or when to receive less amps, which will allow it to achieve economic sustainability.
Collaboration for smart energy consumption
Another of the possibilities offered by Big Data and its data generation is the Open Data trend. This trend allows collaboration between organizations from different sectors to investigate and find interdisciplinary solutions. This is the origin of the so-called Open Energy, do you know it? We recommend this blog to discover this fascinating practice.
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