“Data Spaces Discovery Day” was held in Barcelona on September 28th, a conference organised by IDSA (International Data Spaces Association) on the business value of sovereignty in data sharing, which brought together major players from the international Data Economy scene.

The event featured a number of presentations, round tables and workshops which took an in-depth look at data spaces, their technical, legal and organisational challenges, the main technologies involved and their application to various business sectors such as the automotive, advanced manufacturing, tourism, mobility, food and energy industries.

One of the workshops was devoted entirely to deploying data spaces in the energy sector and included contributions from the Energy Cluster, Tecnalia, Sovity (Fraunhofer's spin-off for developing IDS connectors) and Tekniker, who analysed the subject from 3 perspectives: a specific use case for the wind power segment with its value proposition and associated benefits; the context, information and data to be exchanged; and the technical aspects associated with the architecture, development, demonstration and adoption of data spaces in this segment.

The Basque Energy Cluster highlighted the importance of digitalisation and data sharing as an instrument for reducing operation and maintenance costs (OPEX) in generating renewable energies, particularly for offshore wind farms. In this context, access to data is centred on wind farm owners and manufacturers of wind turbines, and sharing this data with the rest of the value chain (component manufacturers, ICT companies and research centres) can bring substantial benefits in terms of improved designs, performance and service life of wind turbine components, as well as cost reductions (CAPEX and OPEX).

The main challenges from a technical point of view in terms of developing and adopting the technologies associated with data spaces in the field of energy were also presented, along with the progress made by the H2020 PLATOON and Elkartek DAEKIN projects and those planned for the recently launched Horizon Europe OMEGA-X and ENERSHARE projects.

At the end of the presentations, attendees and speakers debated the issues raised and discussed the similarities and differences between the wind power use case and use cases in other sectors, such as the automotive industry.