TEDD - Tangible Energy Dashboard for local Decision-makers

AI Quick Summary

ETH Zurich and ZHAW are building TED, a modular web portal to translate the Energy Strategy 2050 into local actions. TED helps communities develop a net-zero strategy saving the costs for data scientists, GIS specialists and energy consultants. We co-create our dashboard together with users, tailoring the information to the needs of decision makers in 2000+ municipalities and more than 600 distribution grid operators in Switzerland – often small, but key players for the success of the energy transition. Project idea description - What problem would you like to solve? The federal government's Energy Perspectives 2050+ set high level goals, but they are difficult to translate into regional strategies and local actions. Lots of information is available, but unclear, obscured, difficult to interpret, unfiltered, not meaningful - just a bunch of messy data to a decision maker requiring advanced expertise in data science, geoinformatics or engineering sciences to make meaning. - Who are the customers and how will they profit from a solution? We have interviewed over 100 municipality representatives, distribution system operators, energy consultants and especially small to medium-sized entities who do not have the resources for a dedicated geo-information-system or data science team are our target audience. With our solution, the organizations can develop a net-zero strategy independently, by accessing open data tailored to their region. Using an online dashboard architecture, the system is scalable, easy to learn and cost-effective. It enables the organizations to assess the regional status quo in terms of local sustainable energy supply, heating/cooling demand of buildings and number of vehicles. The platform can help identify pathways to reach the Energy Strategy 2050 and suggest first actions, identified as low-hanging fruits. - How does your project idea affect energy savings or CO2 emissions? Existing platforms are highly aggregating on national or international level or help individuals, for example Sonnendach.ch identifies the solar potential of single buildings. Our tool is a first of its kind in Switzerland, targeting organizations who have leverage to deploy large-scale energy saving policies, reduce emissions in mobility and building sector and support faster deployment of sustainable power production like photovoltaics. Current status and previous activities - What has been tried before? What was not successful? What have you learned? The idea started as Benjamin, working at ETH for the National Centre of Competence in Research “Dependable, ubiquitous automation”, identified in discussion with our potential customers that similar questions were recurring in particular regarding photovoltaics and e-mobility. Benjamin with over 10 years experience in the energy industry, and former executive board member of a Swisscom energy joint-venture, developed a script that would allow identifying the top-ranked roofs for photovoltaic installations based on ZIP code, increasing the likelihood of successful sales campaigns. Next, we tried and failed to find industry partners for applying for an innosuisse grant. While small DSOs and public servants are supportive in terms of information and test users, they shy away from applying to an Innosuisse grant (fear of lack of resources, regulatory limitations, etc.), the larger organizations immediately wanted exclusivity and full control over the source code, which would limit our development potential and impact on the Swiss energy transition. In the meantime, more open data was collected and prepared for easy access in a MariaDB cluster and the script turned into a Progressive Web App prototype using R Shiny. The system is freely hosted on private infrastructure with the help from Doris, real estate trustee and co-founder of the blog ladeplan, focusing on e-mobility in multi-dwelling buildings. And the decision was taken to develop the platform for the moment independently. The team needed GIS expertise and Benjamin knew Nils from Twitter for his Open Data community contributions and geoinformatics expertise. Nils is working at ZHAW together with Patrick, professor and head of the Geoinformatics Research Group, and together we have all skills required to successfully create such a desired platform. Resources needed - How can the Energy Lab help you? Funding: As parents and young professionals we need funding to develop our project idea, in particular, to commercialize the prototype and to get enhanced hosting capabilities on board. Design Thinking & Co-Creation: We hope to be able to learn more about the design thinking process and be able to use the EnergyLab infrastructure to do co-creation sessions together with our potential customers. Community & communication: We hope to be able to attract experts from research, industry, politics and society who are part of EnergyLab’s community to further develop the long-term strategy of this platform and to broadcast our solution to decision-makers and the general public. - What are your planned work packages? WP1 Geo-Spatial data integration. Today's prototype uses postal addresses as identifiers and is limited to such data. With WP1 we will integrate geo-information coming from road networks, proximity of points-of-interest and other data that is only available as geo-information, like the number of employees per hectare or OpenStreetMap road networks. WP2 Co-creation workshops with stakeholders. The actual design of the dashboard information tiles will be developed through co-creation with participation from the Energy Lab partner network and our own contacts. This will set the goals for WP3. WP3 Develop TEDD with simple query functionalities. Based on the feedback we select two specific tiles on the dashboard and develop the functionality ready to be used independently at scale on an industry-grade online platform, including authentication and personalization.

Project Idea Metadata

• Project Idea Name: TEDD - Tangible Energy Dashboard for local Decision-makers
• Date: 2/2/2022 10:17:58 AM
• Administrators:
  • Benjamin Sawicki

Project Idea Description

Project idea description

- What problem would you like to solve?

The federal government's Energy Perspectives 2050+ set high level goals, but they are difficult to translate into regional strategies and local actions. Lots of information is available, but unclear, obscured, difficult to interpret, unfiltered, not meaningful - just a bunch of messy data to a decision maker requiring advanced expertise in data science, geoinformatics or engineering sciences to make meaning.

- Who are the customers and how will they profit from a solution?

We have interviewed over 100 municipality representatives, distribution system operators, energy consultants and especially small to medium-sized entities who do not have the resources for a dedicated geo-information-system or data science team are our target audience.

With our solution, the organizations can develop a net-zero strategy independently, by accessing open data tailored to their region. Using an online dashboard architecture, the system is scalable, easy to learn and cost-effective. It enables the organizations to assess the regional status quo in terms of local sustainable energy supply, heating/cooling demand of buildings and number of vehicles. The platform can help identify pathways to reach the Energy Strategy 2050 and suggest first actions, identified as low-hanging fruits.

- How does your project idea affect energy savings or CO2 emissions?

Existing platforms are highly aggregating on national or international level or help individuals, for example Sonnendach.ch identifies the solar potential of single buildings. Our tool is a first of its kind in Switzerland, targeting organizations who have leverage to deploy large-scale energy saving policies, reduce emissions in mobility and building sector and support faster deployment of sustainable power production like photovoltaics.

Current status and previous activities

- What has been tried before? What was not successful? What have you learned?

The idea started as Benjamin, working at ETH for the National Centre of Competence in Research “Dependable, ubiquitous automation”, identified in discussion with our potential customers that similar questions were recurring in particular regarding photovoltaics and e-mobility. Benjamin with over 10 years experience in the energy industry, and former executive board member of a Swisscom energy joint-venture, developed a script that would allow identifying the top-ranked roofs for photovoltaic installations based on ZIP code, increasing the likelihood of successful sales campaigns.

Next, we tried and failed to find industry partners for applying for an innosuisse grant. While small DSOs and public servants are supportive in terms of information and test users, they shy away from applying to an Innosuisse grant (fear of lack of resources, regulatory limitations, etc.), the larger organizations immediately wanted exclusivity and full control over the source code, which would limit our development potential and impact on the Swiss energy transition.

In the meantime, more open data was collected and prepared for easy access in a MariaDB cluster and the script turned into a Progressive Web App prototype using R Shiny. The system is freely hosted on private infrastructure with the help from Doris, real estate trustee and co-founder of the blog ladeplan, focusing on e-mobility in multi-dwelling buildings. And the decision was taken to develop the platform for the moment independently.

The team needed GIS expertise and Benjamin knew Nils from Twitter for his Open Data community contributions and geoinformatics expertise. Nils is working at ZHAW together with Patrick, professor and head of the Geoinformatics Research Group, and together we have all skills required to successfully create such a desired platform.

Resources needed

- How can the Energy Lab help you?

• Funding: As parents and young professionals we need funding to develop our project idea, in particular, to commercialize the prototype and to get enhanced hosting capabilities on board.
• Design Thinking & Co-Creation: We hope to be able to learn more about the design thinking process and be able to use the EnergyLab infrastructure to do co-creation sessions together with our potential customers.
• Community & communication: We hope to be able to attract experts from research, industry, politics and society who are part of EnergyLab’s community to further develop the long-term strategy of this platform and to broadcast our solution to decision-makers and the general public.

- What are your planned work packages?

• WP1 Geo-Spatial data integration. Today's prototype uses postal addresses as identifiers and is limited to such data. With WP1 we will integrate geo-information coming from road networks, proximity of points-of-interest and other data that is only available as geo-information, like the number of employees per hectare or OpenStreetMap road networks.
• WP2 Co-creation workshops with stakeholders. The actual design of the dashboard information tiles will be developed through co-creation with participation from the Energy Lab partner network and our own contacts. This will set the goals for WP3.
• WP3 Develop TEDD with simple query functionalities. Based on the feedback we select two specific tiles on the dashboard and develop the functionality ready to be used independently at scale on an industry-grade online platform, including authentication and personalization.

ETH Zurich and ZHAW are building TED, a modular web portal to translate the Energy Strategy 2050 into local actions. TED helps communities develop a net-zero strategy saving the costs for data scientists, GIS specialists and energy consultants. We co-create our dashboard together with users, tailoring the information to the needs of decision makers in 2000+ municipalities and more than 600 distribution grid operators in Switzerland – often small, but key players for the success of the energy transition.