Call for evidence
Eurelectric welcomes the opportunity to respond to the consultation forming the Strategic roadmap on digitalisation and AI in the energy sector.
Assessment
The power sector has made substantial progress in digitalisation, but levels of maturity vary significantly across Europe. Digital tools and AI offer valuable opportunities, for example: to enhance data analysis, demand forecasting, grid balancing, predictive maintenance, renewable integration, customer interaction, and overall operational efficiency. These developments can strengthen system stability and resilience, improve consumer satisfaction, increase market predictability, and foster innovation for a more competitive Europe.
At the same time, the rising energy demand of data centres and AI infrastructure must be planned and developed in a grid-friendly manner by taking into consideration the systemic impact of their integration and tackling subsequent bottlenecks accordingly. The power sector stands ready to cooperate to meet this demand.
However, digitalisation also presents major challenges. The upfront and ongoing costs of new digital tools are significant. For DSOs, the regulatory frameworks are sometimes disincentivising digitalisation as OPEX costs and by not allowing a full recovery of costs borne. Adding to this, a shortage of specialised IT and digital skills further limits the ability to implement and manage these solutions effectively. Cybersecurity risks remain critical, as digital systems increase exposure to potential attacks on essential infrastructure. In addition, poor data quality and the persistence of legacy systems complicate integration, reduce interoperability, and slow down technology adoption.
The needs for data exchange in the energy sector are growing, driven by the transition and added flexibility of the power system. New solutions to improve data quality and interoperability, secure transmission and storage of information require substantial and ongoing efforts. In this context, data sharing practices should be carefully regulated to maintain security, while also guaranteeing a suitable degree of flexibility to allow a smooth adoption without imposing drastic changes on existing systems.
Recommendations:
- Data readiness for AI: Ensure that RAID-E explicitly addresses data quality, interoperability, and preparatory steps necessary before AI deployment becomes feasible at scale. These result-oriented efforts could truly provide added value for the sector. Adding to this, it remains key to continue supporting research and innovation through fostering R&D partnerships, EU pilot projects, dedicated funding instruments, and targeted skills development to drive digital transformation.
- Sustainable data centre integration: Manage demand by fostering policy to reduce speculative connection requests and increasing grid capacity to mitigate congestion and promoting early stakeholder dialogue within DNDPs to align future demand with grid planning.
- Guiding roadmap with recommendations: We welcome a coordinated EU roadmap that complements existing legislation while avoiding regulatory overlaps and additional complexity. Alongside the roadmap, the sector looks forward to guidance on AI high risk use cases for the sector which maintains a narrower scope, as originally intended in the law (AI Act, recital 55).
- Build on existing structures: Any new initiatives should utilise existing ecosystems and governance structures whenever they have proved effective.
- EU-wide AI initiative: a Horizon-funded programme for a specialised foundation model could accelerate AI deployment. If launched, development should remain strictly European within a trusted data-sharing environment, based on European AI models, and supported by secure access to European compute infrastructure. In this case, real-world examples and testing are needed before wide deployment. Relevant stakeholders should be included when defining use cases and training processes. As an example, a model for improved weather forecasting could be valuable.