Data Release Consultation: P114 Data Items
Seeking views from industry on data requests received, prior to the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service Change Board (BCB) making a determination on whether to release requested data.
Status
On this page
Who will this impact?
We are seeking views from industry on data requests received through the Open Data Request process. Please submit the form below if you disagree with the BSCCo recommendations in the consultation document.
Settlement data files currently provided under a P114 licence (SAA-I014 subflow 2, CDCA-I029, CDCA-I030, CDCA-I042) are supplied under a data license. The BSCCo. supply the data sets under these licensing arrangements free of charge after approval of BSC Panel Paper 321/10 Approval of Data Licenses and the Reclassification of P114, P30 and P315 Data Licenses due to P398 Open Data Requests.at BSC Panel 321 in December 2021.
There are 372 individual data items subject to P114 Data Licensing arrangements. We have tabularised the data items and summarised the reasons behind the recommended classification of each item in the rationale column. SAA-I014 (subflow 2) are split out from the CDCA data items.
Data items requested
Please note, although grouped in one consultation and Open Data Request, all data items within the data flows will be assessed on an individual basis. Each item can receive a different triage outcome and/or Classification recommendation.
This is a 15 working-day consultation relating to data items currently subject to licensing arrangements under the P114 licence. Each data item within the data flows supplied through the P114 license has been assessed on the criteria below.
Initial triage and classification – BSCCo’s initial assessment of the requested data set
Previous restrictions from the P114 licence were based on the cost of accessing the data. As this cost was set to £0 in BSC Panel 321, the restrictions due to the cost to access the data need no longer apply.
The BSCCo. have assessed each data item on the four triage categories:
- Consumer Privacy – A person who can be identified from the information requested – either directly or indirectly in combination with other information
- Negative Consumer Impact – Likely to drive actions that will negatively impact consumers
- Security – Creates incremental, or exacerbates existing, security issues which cannot be mitigated via sensible security protocols such as physical site security, robust cyber security or buffer databases
- Commercial – Relates to the private administration of a business or, data not collected as part of an obligation by a regulated monopoly and would not have been originated or captured without the activity of the organisation
The result of this assessment for each triaging category is listed in the reference table above. In summary, the BSCCo. Have identified 139 data items that conflict with the ‘Commercial’ category. This is due to the data items relating to and being attributable to an individual business. As such, these data items will receive a ‘Public’ Classifcation and will be provided under a BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items that maintains certain restrictions. These restrictions are designed to protect against the exploitation of the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. When using the data, users must follow the restrictions set out in the associated Public data license for data items under this classification.
All other data items have no conflict with the four triaging categories. The BSC recommend classifying all these data items as Open. As shown in the table, Elexon publish versions of most of these data items on Elexon’s free to use data services.
This approach means the BSCCo will supply the data to all without the signing of a specific agreement or authentication steps.
The different Classifications applied to the dataset can be found in the Open Data Request are of the Open Data Request webpage. This also contains templates for licences of each classification. Please note, other than the BSC Open Data Licence, the other templates will be modified and be bespoke to the Data Request to which they apply. The Public Data Licence containing restrictions has been attached to this Consultation for clarity.
Proposed mitigation
How BSCCo proposes to mitigate the data to make it more open (if applicable) and what the subsequent triage and classification shall be
The BSCCo will classify the data items that are currently held under the P114 Data Licence as a mixture of Open and Public. The BSCCo will apply no mitigation techniques to the raw data at this time. There will be restrictions applied to the data items classified as Public, see the related BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items for information.
Benefits
Should be requested data be released, the benefits to BSC Parties, wider industry and/or the requester have been identified as:
Maximising the value of data
The BSCCo have assessed the data with the Open Data Principle of presuming the data can be Open unless there is a reason against publishing the data openly and freely. 233 of the 372 data items will be supplied under the BSC Open Data Licence. This will provide maximum value to industry as customers will be able to have a single source of truth for raw BSC Data contained within the SAA-I014 subflow 2, CDCA-I029, CDCA-I030 and CDCA-I042 data flows.
Despite certain data items being subject to the BSC Public Data Licence with some restrictions, the data will still be available to all without the signing of a specific agreement. This access will allow users of the data to use the data for internal business processes only, with the potential to improve the operations within businesses using the data. As these data items relate to individual businesses, this is the maximum value we can add whilst being conscious of the Commercial triaging category.
Visibility of data
Removing permissions surrounding access to P114 data allows anyone to access the flat files (SAA-I014 subflow 2, CDCA-I029, CDCA-I030, CDCA-I042). Subject to approval, the BSC Open Data Licence and BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items will cover the P114 data. Elexon will then be able to improve the delivery of data contained within these datasets. This will allow us to improve data visibility through new delivery avenues and providing standardised metadata with these avenues.
The terms of the BSC Open Data Licence are compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 and the Open Data Commons Attribution License, which are machine-readable. This ensures licencing information pertinent to the datasets are also visible.
The Open data items can be shared more freely now they are no longer binded by the restrictive P114 data licence. This sharing will improve the visibility of the data.
Visibility of Infrastructure and Assets
Data held within P114 can help inform work on building a Digital System Map of the Energy System and allow participants to take part in their own monitoring of the Great British Electricity System. The publishing of this data allows industry stakeholders to have access to the latest, most accurate, Settlement Data contained within these data flows, and this will aid operations within the industry across the market.
Having access to system wide Balancing Market data will allow for new data tools, solutions and platforms to be built by a wide range of stakeholders. Namely, innovation will play an important role in the transition to a Net-Zero.
At the time of writing this Consultation, The BSCCo has three other Open Data Requests relating to P114 data:
- DR567858: Settlement metering TRIAD data from the SAA-I014
- DR523432: Half Hourly Consumption for Supplier (2_) BM Units
- DR395136: The Retail Energy Code (RECCo) are requesting various BSC data items to be fed into calculations to estimate the total value of GB energy theft (various data items within this request)
This demonstrates stakeholder need for these datasets to be available as openly as possible.
The triaging and classification of these data items allows the BSCCo to process Open Data Requests related to these data items without the blocker of a signed Licence and presents clear reasoning for how each data item should be treated in the Open Data Request process.
Impacts
The impacts to BSC Parties, wider industry, and/or requester should the requested data be released
The information within the Settlement data files pertains to all BSC Parties and the entire Great British electricity market. As such, the Open and Public publication of this information will have market wide impacts. Some stakeholders to whom the data pertains may have a desire for the data items to not be published under the Open and Public classifications.
Duplication
Whether BSCCo is aware of similar data sets produced by themselves or other organisations
Elexon currently publish various data items subject to P114 licences arrangements on the Open Settlement Data webpage. Several comparable data items are also published on the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service.
We have created a reference table for the publish locations of comparable data below.
Coupling
Whether the data set could be coupled with other data sets (published by BSCCo or others) for commercial, nefarious or other purposes
As many of these data items are published in other areas we do not see Coupling to be an issue. Where the data could be used in commercial purposes, the data will be restricted by BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items. The terms of the BSC Public Data Licence for this request will restrict the use of coupling for commercial exploitation activities.
Risk
What (if any) will be the risk to Settlement, BSCCo and Industry members as applicable
There is potential risk that BSC Parties may feel the Open publication of Settlement Data provides too much access to data pertaining to individual businesses. As the data is already received by Market Participants and available free of charge, we do not see this as a substantial risk to publishing the data under the BSC Open Data Licence for the majority of the data items. Where the BSCCo have identified data items that clearly relate to an individual business, we have retained restrictions with the BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items
Costs
What will be the cost for the BSCCo in terms of time and money to create the data set. This will include BSC agent costs as well as any ongoing costs if applicable.
The BSCCo provide P114 files via the Elexon Portal, available via FTP and with preformatted URL for scripting requests. The BSCCo will continue to provide the data through this infrastructure and, subject to approval, users will no longer have to sign a licensing agreement to access the data but must comply with the associated BSC Licence when using the data.
There will be no incurred cost due to recommended changes to Classification and delivery method of this Open Data Request.
Periodicity
Whether the data set is proposed to be re-published at given intervals, or as a one-off
Data publication will follow the existing timelines and infrastructure. These files are updated on the Elexon Portal on a daily basis.
The data within the files ranges from daily level, Settlement Period level to SPOT time level. No alterations or mitigation techniques were applied to the data, therefore this granularity will be maintained.
Review period
How often the BCB should review whether the data set remains extant or whether it will be published in perpetuity to be reviewed by exception
The data sets contained within this Open Data Request will be published in perpetuity and the BSCCo propose this dataset not be reviewed by the BCB unless requested via an Open Data Request.
BSCCo’s initial recommendation to BCB
Our recommendation is that all the Data Flows currently subject to the P114 Licensing arrangements be published through the current infrastructure and format under the BSC Open Data Licence and the BSC Public Data Licence for P114 Data Items. Please refer to the classification column of the reference table for this consultation to determine which data items will be classified as Public.
The BSCCo recommend the terms of the BSC Public Data Licence contains restrictions to prevent the commercial exploitation from certain data items relating to individual organisations.
How to respond
Use the online form to respond to this consultation questions. All responses must be submitted by 12:00 on 4 April 2022 and will be sent to [email protected] on submission.
If you wish to save and return to your response, or share your response with a colleague before submitting then use the save and return button at the bottom of the form. You will then be given a link with your draft response that you can return to or share before submission.
If you would like a follow up from Elexon about your consultation response, please provide your contact details in the form.
Other forms of response, such as free text email, will be accepted and should be sent to [email protected], clearly indicating which data request consultation you are responding to.
This is a 15 Working Day consultation. The consultation follows the standard format outlined in the Process for Requesting BSC Data Code Subsidiary Document.
The responses to this consultation will be presented to the BMRS Change Board (BCB) who will be responsible for approving the recommendations.