Arturo Medela Ceballos on Advancing Energy Data Spaces
How do experts bridge the gap between research, technology, and real-world business models? To explore this, STELAR interviewed Arturo Medela Ceballos, Team Leader of the Data Spaces Team at Eviden and Project Coordinator of the OMEGA-X consortium.
With extensive experience leading European and national R&D projects, Arturo focuses on integrating data sharing, AI, IoT, and advanced computing into business strategies that drive efficiency, sustainability, and sector-wide collaboration.
In our conversation, he shares insights into his work on federated energy data spaces, the challenges of interoperability across energy sectors, and the broader impact of initiatives like OMEGA-X and STELAR on the digital economy.
What motivates a leader at the intersection of innovation and application, and how are emerging data spaces shaping connected industries? The answers are in the interview.
Exploring Our Guest's Motivation and Background
Your career spans multiple R&D projects at the European and national levels. What initially drew you to this field?
In my initial endeavours in a work environment, while I was finishing my studies, I noticed how appealing R&D activities were to me. Once I joined the labour world, the SME I worked for handed me the chance to be a part of different consortia in national and European research projects, which in turn provided me with the opportunity to conduct R&D activities within diverse fields, mostly specialising in the Internet of Things context.
What motivates you the most about working at Eviden and leading projects in digital transformation and data-driven innovation?
What motivates me the most about working at Eviden, particularly within the energy sector, is the opportunity to contribute to one of the most critical and rapidly evolving industries through digital transformation and data-driven innovation. Eviden’s strategic role in supporting energy companies to become more efficient, sustainable, and resilient is not only forward-thinking – it’s essential for the global transition to cleaner, smarter energy systems.
Eviden’s ability to leverage advanced analytics, AI, and high-performance computing to optimise energy production, distribution, and consumption presents an exciting platform for innovation. Leading transformation projects in this context means tackling complex challenges – such as grid modernisation, decarbonisation, predictive maintenance, and energy forecasting – with real-world impact. This intersection of technology and sustainability is where I find the greatest professional fulfilment.
Moreover, Eviden’s collaborative culture, combined with its commitment to ethical innovation and long-term value creation, provides a unique environment to lead with purpose. Being part of a team that not only drives operational excellence but also contributes to the energy sector’s journey toward net zero is both motivating and deeply meaningful to me.
Role and Responsibilities in Building Energy Data Spaces through OMEGA-X
In the OMEGA-X project, which focuses on building a federated energy data space for secure and sovereign data sharing, what is your specific role, and what are your key responsibilities in driving this initiative forward?
When I joined the OMEGA-X project in January 2024 I was appointed the role of project coordinator. In a European R&D cooperative project such as this, under Horizon Europe programme funding, the Project Coordinator holds a central role that blends scientific leadership with comprehensive project management. For instance, the Coordinator manages the grant and consortium agreements, ensuring that all partners understand their roles and obligations.
Throughout the project’s lifecycle, the Coordinator oversees its implementation by monitoring progress, coordinating activities among partners, and ensuring that milestones and deliverables are met, receiving solid backing by the Technical Coordinator to address all technical-related activities. The Project Coordinator acts as the primary liaison between the consortium and the European Commission, facilitating communication and resolving any issues that arise. Financial management is also a key responsibility; the Coordinator allocates funds appropriately, tracks expenditures, and ensures compliance with financial regulations.
Additionally, the Coordinator ensures that the project adheres to ethical guidelines and legal regulations, oversees dissemination and exploitation activities, and manages risk by identifying potential challenges and developing strategies to mitigate them. Their role is crucial in steering the project towards its objectives and ensuring its success.
What are the biggest technical and regulatory challenges in implementing a project like OMEGA-X, and how is your team addressing these challenges?
The OMEGA-X project, aimed at developing an interoperable and sovereign federated multi-vector energy data space, faced several technical and regulatory challenges in its implementation. One significant technical hurdle was achieving semantic interoperability across diverse platforms and technologies. To address this, the project developed a Common Information Model and utilised ontologies to ensure consistent data exchange and integration among various stakeholders in the energy sector.
Another challenge lies in establishing a federated infrastructure for data ingestion and storage, given the existence of numerous independent platforms with varying standards. OMEGA-X aimed to define the minimum interoperability and federation requirements needed for these platforms to adhere to the Energy Data Space, ensuring trusted and secure data sharing.
On the regulatory front, ensuring compliance with European data protection and sovereignty standards was crucial. The project got a GAIA-X label and received the consideration of Gaia-X Lighthouse project, which guarantees high standards of protection, security, transparency, openness, and trust, while avoiding vendor lock-in and restricting data sharing to EU countries. By adhering to these standards, OMEGA-X looked for the optimal way to foster secure and sovereign data exchange among energy stakeholders.
Collaboration between various energy sectors (electricity, gas, heat) is crucial for efficiency and innovation. How does OMEGA-X ensure interoperability between these domains, and what role do AI and IoT play in this process?
OMEGA-X addresses interoperability within the energy domain by focusing on harmonised data sharing and federation across electricity, electromobility or renewables sectors. Rather than targeting a broad cross-sectoral approach, the project concentrated on energy-themed projects funded under similar European programmes.
A key element of this strategy was the collaboration and alignment with sister projects within the Energy Data Spaces Cluster (EDSC). Through this interaction, interoperability was not only conceptualised but also practically tested and validated, ensuring consistency and compatibility across various energy-specific platforms and use cases.
IoT was not a central focus of OMEGA-X and played no significant role in its development or implementation. While the platform does anticipate the use of certain AI techniques – particularly for enhancing data analysis and automation – these have so far not been fundamental to the core architecture. The project’s primary emphasis remains on establishing a robust, interoperable infrastructure for energy data exchange, which can later support advanced technologies, including AI, as the ecosystem evolves.
Cross-Sectoral Innovation and Future Outlook
The EU is fostering cross-sectoral data spaces to enhance digital innovation and economic growth. While OMEGA-X focuses on energy, STELAR is developing a Knowledge Lake Management System (KLMS) to enable AI-ready data and semantic interoperability in smart agriculture and food safety. How do you see such initiatives contributing to a more interconnected and data-driven digital economy?
Initiatives like OMEGA-X and STELAR exemplify the EU’s strategic vision for a federated, interoperable, and sovereign data ecosystem that drives digital innovation across key sectors. While each project operates within its respective vertical – energy for OMEGA-X and agri-food for STELAR – they both contribute critical building blocks to the foundation of a cross-sectoral European data space.
By addressing challenges such as semantic interoperability, data governance, and AI-readiness, these initiatives create reusable frameworks, technologies, and best practices that can be adapted beyond their initial domains. The convergence of such efforts accelerates the development of a more interconnected digital economy, where data from diverse sectors can be combined to unlock higher-value services and insights.
For example, energy consumption data from OMEGA-X could potentially inform smart agricultural practices supported by STELAR, contributing to more efficient food production and sustainable resource use. Moreover, harmonised approaches to data sharing and semantic models lay the groundwork for AI-driven applications that rely on consistent, high-quality datasets across domains. In this way, projects like OMEGA-X and STELAR are not isolated initiatives but integral components of a broader, interoperable ecosystem that supports the EU’s goals for digital sovereignty, economic resilience, and sustainable innovation.
What do you see as the next big innovation in the fields of energy data, IoT, and smart platforms, and how do you think they will shape the future of digital transformation?
According to recent trends, it seems as the next big wave of innovation in energy data, IoT, and smart platforms is likely to center around trusted, real-time data ecosystems powered by edge intelligence, federated AI, and digital twins. As energy systems become more decentralised and dynamic – with the rise of prosumers, renewables, and microgrids – the ability to process and act on data in real time, close to where it is generated, will be crucial. This is where edge computing and IoT will converge to enable responsive, resilient, and context-aware energy services.
At the same time, federated learning and AI will allow collaborative model training across distributed datasets without compromising data privacy or sovereignty – a particularly important aspect in regulated sectors like energy. This opens up new possibilities for predictive maintenance, demand forecasting, and decentralised optimisation, all while adhering to European values of trust and control over data.
Another transformative innovation is the integration of semantic interoperability and digital twins into smart platforms. These technologies will allow different systems – across energy, mobility, agriculture, and beyond – to “understand” and work with each other’s data. For energy, this means enabling smarter, cross-sector orchestration of supply and demand, with automated decision-making based on a shared, real-time understanding of infrastructure and environmental conditions.
Together, these advancements will hopefully shape the next phase of digital transformation by making platforms not only smarter but also more interoperable, explainable, and citizen-centric, turning siloed data into actionable intelligence and fostering innovation across interconnected domains.
Conclusion
Arturo Medela Ceballos offered a clear view of how data spaces, AI, and IoT are reshaping the way industries collaborate and innovate. His experience highlights the value of building secure, interoperable digital ecosystems across sectors.
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