Innovating business models in the energy sector by using data

Abstract

The energy sector is undergoing a significant transition, encouraging companies to innovate current business models (BM). The use of data is expanding to innovate BMs, but there is still a gap in how companies create business value from data. This research aims to examine how companies in the energy sector innovate their BMs by using data, and what internal and external barriers exist in terms of data, and how these affect the innovation of BMs. Findings from a study based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with industry experts indicate that implementation of new systems and initiatives is needed to identify, meet, and engage customer demands. Furthermore, investment in analytics is crucial for operation costs and production efficiency and is necessary with the shift from isolated data systems to an interconnected approach. There is a need to use analytics to leverage information from customer data to differentiate offerings, sensor data for maintenance efficiency and internal data for optimizing internal processes. Practical initiatives are vehicle-to-grid, second-life batteries, sensor data and computer vision with a need of enabling device interactions. Identified barriers to using data include understandability, accessibility, trustfulness, and measurability, as well as limitation of cross-sharing data for privacy reasons, the incorporation of data in the overall business and regulatory constraints of GDPR and accessibility of grid data. The research contributes to an extended understanding of how companies in the sector create value by implementing and increasing the use of data, as well as highlighting the various barriers to doing so.

Date of Award	27 Jun 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	René Bohnsack (Supervisor)