An Open Digital Platform to Support Interdisciplinary Energy Research and Practice—Conceptualization

Abstract

Energy research itself is changing due to digitalization and the trend to open science. While this change enables new research, it also increases the amount of, and need for, available data and models. Therefore, a platform for open digital energy research and development is required to support researchers and practitioners with their new needs and to enable FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) research data management in energy research. We present a functional and technological concept for such a platform based on six elements: Competence to enable researchers and practitioners to find suitable partners for their projects, Methods to give an overview on the diverse possible research methods within energy research, Repository to support finding data and models for simulation of energy systems, Simulation to couple these models and data to create user-defined simulation scenarios, Transparency to publish results and other content relevant for the different stakeholder in energy research, and Core to interconnect all elements and to offer a unified entry point. We discuss the envisioned use of the outlined platform with use cases addressing three relevant stakeholder groups.