“… discovery would, in due course, bequeath mobility and power to the world’s population, play a central role in the rise and fall of nations and empires, and become a major element in the transformation of human society. But all that, of course, was still to come. What followed immediately was like a gold rush! …”
This is how Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Prize” describes how oil entered human life in the late 1850s and began to “transform” modern life.
It should not be a coincidence that Yergin referenced another valuable commodity of the same period and used the words “gold rush” while attributing value to oil. The British mathematician Humby defined data as a “new commodity”, and used the phrase “data is the new oil”.
In both narratives, it is emphasized that the new commodity rushed can be at least as valuable as the previous commodity and may even replace the old one in economic terms. Because we are all experiencing the concrete reflection of the “new epic quest” for this new commodity, of which Humby is also an important actor. The power of data has made the biggest technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google much more valuable than the energy giants such as Standard, BP, Shell, Exxon, which were the most valuable companies of the period.
Recently, we see that this new epic quest has returned to the energy markets. However, this time, the commodity that makes the transformation is data, and the one that is affected by the transformation is electricity. Today’s electricity markets are affected by a wide range of datasets; instantaneous generation and consumption data obtained from smart meters, forecasts of different qualities from many forecast providers, actual market prices, depth information, fuel costs, system direction, wind speed, frequency information, cloudiness, faults, operator instructions and so on.
And with this data being used more and more every day, the markets are transforming.
We can see this transformation more clearly, especially in short-term intraday markets. In these markets, taking the most “correct” decisions is possible only by making the best sense of the data. For example, taking power, wind speed, wind direction and fault data from the power plants on a real time basis and processing in a machine learning model to produce a forecast every 10 minutes to predict the generation of a large wind farm portfolio for the next 2 hours can earn millions on an annual basis. Furthermore, algorithms can decide for the commercial transaction to be made in milliseconds and reduce the imbalance costs of market participants by 30%.
Naturally, companies with such capabilities in the electricity markets are the winners of the transformation. And we at smartPulse are proud that our customers are the winners!
This transformation will accelerate and evolve into other stages in the future. Many business models that may sound a bit “futuristic” right now will shape our new living standards in the future. And during this transformation, the importance of data will always continue to increase. We will continue to make new investments by foreseeing the structures of the future and to develop simple but sophisticated, accessible, and smart solutions for our customers.
Wishing that new quests will bring goodness, welfare, happiness, and peace to all humanity…
Ali Güleç
