Big Data In The Energy Sector: GDPR Reminder For Energy Companies - Data Protection - European Union

On 18 September, Dentons hosted an Energy Institute event in our London office with the title "The Clash of Digitalisations". Speakers from Upside Energy, Powervault and Mixergy spoke about the Pete Project, an initiative funded by Innovate UK, that is exploring the potential of domestic hot water tanks and batteries to provide flexibility services to National Grid. Fascinating as the technological and energy-regulatory aspects of this kind of household demand-side response aggregation services are, a key common theme of the evening was the central role played in them by the analysis of large amounts of "personal data", and whether recent changes in privacy legislation help or hinder the development of such services. We produced this short article to put that discussion in context. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force across the European Union (EU) on 25 May 2018 and is intended to overhaul the way that companies collect and use personal data.