OpenFridge: A platform for data economy for energy efficiency data

The energy sector is becoming an important showcase for data economy, because of the societal, environmental and business value that can be created based on the vast amounts of newly available energy-related data. Utilizing the explosive growth in Big Data technology solutions, and the steady march of open data initiatives, this development is mainly driven by the requirements regarding CO₂ emissions reduction, and the vision of environmentally sustainable energy consumption and production in the Smart Grid. The market for energy efficient home appliances, renewable energy generation equipment, and accompanying services that monitor, control and increase efficiency of energy consumption and own energy generation is drastically increasing, pulling the demand and expectations of the mass consumers. In addition to almost well-established automated metering and demand response business models, one interesting new opportunity is emerging: based on the data directly available from home devices and appliances, their manufacturers can develop new customer engagement approaches and added-value services. In this paper we describe the preliminary architecture that integrates Big Data and semantic overlay components, developed in the project OpenFridge with the goal to create data economy for energy efficiency information. The project addresses different challenges of offering specific type of energy efficiency information to various interested stakeholders (appliance manufacturers, end users, utilities, municipalities, etc.) under the new access mechanisms and business models. The initial service focuses on energy consumption analysis of large household appliance(s) such as a fridge, and involves the real end user communities.