Energy Cloud Platforms

Market opportunities
Context of the innovator zone Energy Cloud Platforms

A crucial question in today’s energy landscape is how to provide (big) data towards third parties in a uniform, transparent, qualitative and legally correct format. To this end a multitude of (intelligent) energy apps and services are being developed and rolled out. The innovator zone 'Energy Cloud Platforms' sets high ambitions for digital Flanders and aims to facilitate individuals and companies in the development of services (with market value) that combine and enrich energy data with building, context and other available open data.

Existing strengths of Flanders –
Energy Cloud Platforms

Flanders has strong ICT expertise in the domain of Internet technology, data security, interdisciplinary approaches and digital real-life labs. Our digital start-up culture gets international recognition.
Other trumps of the Flemish region include

• Existing living lab infrastructure - Flanders is an active member of Enoll (European Network of Living Labs). Our region has important lab infrastructures, like the iMinds IoT HomeLab, Office Lab, CloudNetLab and City of Things, and it has unique demonstration sites like Living Tomorrow, SNOWBALL and energyville. 
• iMinds has a specific IoT program that can serve as a basis for follow-up projects applied to the energy domain, complemented with specific projects on smart cities like EPIC (European Platform for Intelligent Cities).
• Project experience and results – Largescale research projects like LINEAR (coordinated by EnergyVille) have already demonstrated that it is possible to realize a connected home where power flexibility is used for various business cases.
• The environment department and Volta run maakjemeterslim.be, promoting all applications connected to the digital meter, both wire and wireless.

Focus of the innovator zone Energy Cloud Platforms

In response to a wide variety of challenges in the innovator zone ‘Energy Cloud Platforms’, further development of new technologies is an absolute must. ‘Internet’ of Things makes communication and data exchange between different devices possible. Artificial Intelligence is able to constantly adapt and improve energy management, based on user behaviour and their priorities. Therefor, the innovator zone ‘Energy Cloud Platforms’ will focus specifically on the following break-throughs:

• Realize an energy cloud with open interfaces for stimulating the creation of new intelligent apps and services.
• Improve the robustness, scalability and self-configurability of wireless communication networks to connect buildings, industrial plants and grid assets in a reliable way. 
• Make building systems and appliances connected, smart and self-learning, by adding cheap sensors and machine-learning capabilities.
• Guarantee the reliability of our energy system and protect privacy sensitive databy adding capabilities to the energy cloud that can realize cyber security and trust.