Report on the first international workshop on energy data management (EnDM 2012)

The energy sector is in transition–being forced to rethink the current practice and apply data-management based IT solutions to provide a scalable and sustainable supply and distribution of energy. Novel challenges range from renewable energy production over energy distribution and monitoring to controlling and moving energy consumption. Huge amounts of “Big Energy Data,” i.e., data from smart meters, new renewable energy sources (RES–such as wind, solar, hydro, thermal, etc), novel distributions mechanisms (Smart Grid), and novel types of consumers and devices, e.g., electric cars, are being collected and must be managed and analyzed to yield their potential. Energy is at the top of the worldwide political agenda. For example, The European Union has stated the “2020-20 goals” (20% renewable energy, 20% better energy efficiency, and 20% CO2 reduction by 2020). Even more ambitious goals are set for 2030 and 2050. This situation is reflected in research funding schemes such as the EU Horizon 2020 Framework program as well as national programs. Increasingly, such programs include joint calls involving both energy and IT partners. Data management is at the heart of this development, as witnessed by the following story headlines from key players: “The Smart Grid Data Deluge” (O’Reilly Radar); “Big data for the Smart Grid” (theenergycollective); “The Coming Smart Grid Data Surge” (SmartGridNews.com). Thus, data management within the energy domain becomes increasingly important. The International Workshop on Energy Data Management (EnDM) focuses on conceptual and system architecture issues related to the management of very large-scale data sets specifically in the context of the energy domain. The overall goal of the EmDM workshop is a) to bridge the gap between domain experts and data management scientists and b) to create awareness of this emerging and very challenging application area. For the workshop’s research program, the organizers especially try to attract contributions that push the envelope towards novel schemes for large-scale data processing with special focus on energy data management. The Second International Workshop on Energy Data Management (EnDM’13) was held in conjunction with