EDP’s Innovation Research and Development Center is leading a pilot project focused on energy data marketplaces as part of the European initiative GREEN.DAT.AI. This consortium brings together 17 organizations from several countries to develop solutions for more energy-efficient data analysis in industry, with a particular emphasis on artificial intelligence.
The GREEN.DAT.AI project receives support from the European Commission through the Horizon Europe program. Its main goal is to reduce the environmental impact caused by processing large volumes of data. The solutions under development have already drawn attention from the Commission, highlighting efforts within the European Union to lead in sustainable technology innovation.
EDP’s R&D Center oversees a pilot called Energy Data Marketplaces, designed to create a digital platform where companies can collaborate using machine learning models without sharing sensitive information. This approach uses decentralized algorithm training and aims to apply “green” AI algorithms that optimize energy consumption during their operation. The focus is currently on wind farm data marketplaces, which help improve accuracy in forecasting energy production across different regions.
The project takes two main approaches to make AI more sustainable: developing algorithms that use less computational power and ensuring these systems are powered by renewable sources like wind, solar, or hydroelectric energy.
Among its objectives are improving energy production forecasts at various locations, minimizing penalties related to bidding calculation errors, enhancing grid efficiency and stability, optimizing producers’ sales strategies, and creating an environment where stakeholders can monetize shared data while maintaining confidentiality.
Partners involved include INESC Tec, CNR, AEGIS, Sphynx, and others. EDP’s R&D Center is now piloting AI-based solutions that enable monetization or exchange of data for improved production forecasts or direct purchase for decision-making in renewable markets. Technologies such as federated learning and geographic knowledge transfer are being used to facilitate secure information sharing among sector participants.
Real operational data from renewable plants supports this initiative by encouraging secure exchange between producers and operators—fostering a reliable ecosystem for data-driven services throughout the value chain. These practices aim to enhance operations and maintenance processes (O&M), develop new market models, better estimate data value, and test decentralized collaborative learning architectures for scalability.
With completion scheduled for 2025, EDP seeks to determine if increased data sharing will substantially improve forecast accuracy in renewables production while supporting smarter grid management and better integration of various renewable sources.
According to EDP representatives: “This innovative approach, based on cooperation between competitors, could become a key element in driving technological advances, refining business models, and optimizing energy systems — contributing to a greener, more digital, and sustainable energy transition on a global scale.”
GREEN.DAT.AI also aims to advance goals set out by the European Green Deal by demonstrating new large-scale services in four sectors—energy included—and across six application scenarios via European Data Spaces. More details about the project can be found at https://greendatai.eu
