First Hackathon Participation

The energy sector is facing a wave of innovation; driven by technology deployments like decentral energy production, the smart meter roll-out, the digitally evolving customer basis, demand for electric vehicles, electric heating and cooling systems - and the demand to decarbonize energy production. 

Other industries have faced waves of digitalization before, and the energy sector is adopting quickly to the lessons learned from others. Most successful were those who let go traditional corporate research labs based on secrecy and silo mentality and created a new paradigm based on openness.  

Part of this open innovation lives in Hackathons. At hackathons organizers present problem-statements as challenges to an audience of participants. The latter form teams to work on and build experimental prototype software (“hacks”) over the duration of the event, mostly something between 24 and 48 hours (“a marathon”). Afterwards the results, consisting of prototypes and preliminary solutions, are presented – and sometimes rewarded.  

It’s then up to the challenge owner to decide what to do with the results – continue the prototyping, rethink the original question, pivot to another topic.  

Such events are great places for experimentation: beyond the hackathon itself, what makes these events great is the open atmosphere, where everyone who wants to contribute, can contribute. Young talents bring their broad experience from various fields, industry experts (challenge owners) can mingle and exchange in an informal way that a classic exhibition booth would not allow, policymakers and representatives of public authorities can get in direct contact with bleeding-edge innovation topics and see what could be possible – or what is not possible due to laws and regulations that don’t evolve with the speed of technology.  

Now for the third year in a row, the Energy Data Hackdays took place at the Hightech Zentrum Aargau in Brugg on the 24th and 25th September 2021. In total, 23 partners presented challenges in 2021, about 10 came from industry sponsors, the others from research institutes including the Energy Science Center, EPFL, FHNW, Empa and NCCR Automation. 

We, as NCCR Automation, have also faced a problem: missing open datasets – that's why we championed the idea to create a platform where citizens with smart meters could donate their data to become public. Additionally, we invited all our members and related networks to join the event, to exchange with stakeholders, to gain experience with an open innovation culture and to enjoy a physical event thanks to covid-certificates.

In the end, our challenge has not been selected by participants and we decided to work on other projects. Meeting various industry players and presenting our Centre of Competence in Research “dependable, ubiquitous automation” gave us the opportunity to profit as well from open innovation: we took new ideas and inspiration home for our moon-shot project.