Introducing the Open Energy Ontology: Enhancing data interpretation and interfacing in energy systems analysis

•The field of energy systems analysis suffers from heterogeneous data, incompatible definitions and irreproducible models. Ontologies, particularly the presented Open Energy Ontology helps to solve these problems.•Ontologies are a precondition for model coupling, semantic analyses of data, and data re-use.•The Open Energy Ontology offers a common description of knowledge and vocabulary which is used across domains and different modelling approaches.•The Open Energy Ontology is embedded within a broad community process to ensure the broadest coverage possible.•Use cases demonstrate the added value of an ontology in the energy domain. [Display omitted] Heterogeneous data, different definitions and incompatible models are a huge problem in many domains, with no exception for the field of energy systems analysis. Hence, it is hard to re-use results, compare model results or couple models at all. Ontologies provide a precisely defined vocabulary to build a common and shared conceptualisation of the energy domain. Here, we present the Open Energy Ontology (OEO) developed for the domain of energy systems analysis. Using the OEO provides several benefits for the community. First, it enables consistent annotation of large amounts of data from various research projects. One example is the Open Energy Platform (OEP). Adding such annotations makes data semantically searchable, exchangeable, re-usable and interoperable. Second, computational model coupling becomes much easier. The advantages of using an ontology such as the OEO are demonstrated with three use cases: data representation, data annotation and interface homogenisation. We also describe how the ontology can be used for linked open data (LOD).