Together and in the open, we are shaping Switzerland’s energy future

This conviction united the around 100 participants at the Energy Data Hackdays, who came together last weekend at the Hightech Zentrum Aargau. Urgent challenges, committed hackers and open energy data made 13 forward-looking new projects possible within 40 hours.

Martin Hertach of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy was enthusiastic about the innovative strength and the results of the Hackdays:

“It is clear that collaboration and open data are the basic prerequisite for implementing the Energy Strategy 2050. The Energy Data Hackdays are further proof of this. Without cross-sector cooperation and the availability of the various energy data, none of this would have been possible.”

13 approaches for a sustainable energy future

As always, it was astonishing and encouraging to see how many solutions can be realised in less than 2 days! Thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of the Hackdays, the approaches that emerged were not only numerous but also highly diverse. The common denominator of all results was the pursuit of a sustainable energy future for Switzerland and the use of freely available energy data, as the following list of all projects shows:

Blackout map: data analysis to identify the causes of blackouts in networks
Algorithmic renewal planning: evaluating the value and assessing the consequences of infrastructure maintenance for the energy supply
PV diagnosis: an app for owners of small solar installations to check whether their equipment is still working optimally
Load Profile Shaping: an app for energy utilities to estimate the future load curve
Charging station site planning: an evaluation of the best locations for e-mobility charging stations
Visistrom: an app that helps end users use electricity at the right time in order to avoid unecological energy sources
Building passport “Cloud”: solutions for developing a building passport
Jambricks: an investigation of the electronic equipment of hackathon participants
What is Watt: a platform that calculates and compares the energy consumption of various everyday scenarios
SBB Weather: an analysis of the influence of the weather on train journeys
Freestyle: Freestyle is an app that helps people use energy at less congested times.
SBB ZEV: a visualisation of the potential of various SBB buildings as self-sufficient units
Videmos: strengthening citizen participation in damage reports

Challenges and new contacts also motivated hackathon newcomers

What surprised the organisers was that more than half of the participants had never been to a hackathon before. Anna from Eniwa was one of these first-timers and explained to us what convinced her to take part in the Energy Data Hackdays:

“What motivated me most were the exciting challenges. I sensed it would be a great opportunity to live out my creativity and to exchange ideas with other sectors and perspectives. And that is exactly how it has turned out. Pursuing a meaningful goal together, the interdisciplinary exchange and the great spirit of the people – it absolutely meets my expectations.”

Also unexpected was the exceptionally high number of participants who stayed overnight on site. 15 people who had travelled to the event from outside the region or even from outside Switzerland stayed overnight at the Hightech Zentrum in Brugg.

Organisation and sponsorship

The event was organised by Zukunftsregion Argovia and Opendata.ch together with AEW Energie AG, Hightech Zentrum Aargau AG, Eniwa AG, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, SBB, Avectris AG and the Energy Department of the Canton of Aargau.