So although the infrastructure is now in place to unlock this wealth of new smart meter data, it is a far from straightforward task and it may well be beyond the budget and scope of a small or greece rcs data medium-sized research project. This could lead to innovative research ideas involving smart meter data falling by the wayside.
A combination of the above factors led a group of academics – that would become the Smart Energy Research Lab consortium – to propose to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) that rather than individual academics and institutions having to navigate these processes, a portal should be set up that would allow all UK academics the opportunity to access the data. Although there are still several administrative steps academics must take before using SERL data, the time and expense of doing this is radically reduced by going via SERL.
The SERL project team also carried out the recruitment of an ‘observatory panel’ of c13,000 GB homes – a major undertaking in itself – whose data researchers would have access to within a state-of-the-art research portal based at the UK Data Archive, University of Essex.