The I-NERGY Reference Architecture for the Provision of Next Generation Energy Services through Artificial Intelligence

Recently the energy sector undergoes a rapid transformation that revolves around digitalization, decentralization and democratization. This is because global energy crisis contributes to rising poverty, raising prices and slowing economies. At the same time disrupting ICT technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT) pose great potential towards improving several processes followed in the energy sector such as better forecasts for energy demand and consumption, that can contribute to significant energy savings. To this end, I-NERGY project aims at promoting and supporting AI in the energy sector through services and applications that support the entire energy value chain. In this publication, the I-NERGY big data reference architecture (RA) is presented, along with the most important technologies that have been used to cover the main requirements of I-NERGY platform. Moreover, I-NERGY is compared to other well-known big data RAs both general-purpose and energy sector specific, and the most important conclusions are presented in brief.