Anita Stalder, Innovation Manager�Andrea Gribi, Smart City projects

Energie Wasser Bern

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Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

Hello Hackathon!�Do you need some energy?

We give you some

& we give energy to Berne!

Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

Oh, this is Berne by the way.�Nice, isnt‘ it?

Grüessech & Härzlech Willkomme!�Hello & Welcome!

Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

What is our mission?

„Mir hautä Bärn am loufe“

we keep Berne running & help to become a decarbonised city

Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern�Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

we are…����… Andrea Gribi & Anita Stalder, responsible for innovation & �Smart City projects @ewb

Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

Yes, we are an energy service provider,

but we offer much more to our customers and our city than energy!

- Wor(l)dcloud�

Innovation is everywhere…

Innovation process ewb

Idea &

concept

Focused Protoype (Paper MVP)

Functional

Prototype

Late-stage Pilot �(Beta)

Early-stage Pilot

(tech. MVP)

Product

launch

Business Launch

& Seeding

Gate

Gate

Gate

How are projects initiated?

• Trendmanagement�Trendscouting & Strategy
• Open Innovation�Collaboration with partners
• Innovationbox program�Involvement of employees

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Ideation Journey: www.ewb.ch/nachhaltigkeit/innovation

Projects

siima�Providing safety for an independent life�

siima - How it works?

Time

Watt

Alarm (min. below 100 Watt)

Challenges & Learnings���

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• Focus on the customer problem �not on your company problems

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• Belief in your ideas�if they are validated from your customers

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KU:BE�Audio City Tour�

KU:BE - How it works?

Challenges & Learnings��

• Work in Eco-Systems (Smart City) even if it’s not (yet?) your core business

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• Testing not just talking �«does GPS work or not»?

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e(wb)-car charging�charging the e-car at the streetlight��

Challenges & Learnings��

• Do market tests, even there are still unsolved problems�the charging capacity is still slow, it’s hard to find places to install charging stations, different parking zones, and so on…

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Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

That‘s why we are here

@ Hackathon Decarbonising Cities

There are still a lot of challenges...

Innovationmanagement Energie Wasser Bern – Hackathon Decarbonising Cities 2021

„Dankä!“

Thank you for your attention & good luck!

innovation@ewb.ch

Till Richter, Head Data�ALIUNID

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Energy & Climate Hack

Decarbonising Cities

September 2021

How can we help Isabelle reduce her CO2 footprint?

Average carbon emissions caused by our electricity �consumption account for 23% (UK) and 10% (CH).

The carbon intensity of electricity varies over time.�How can Isabelle determine her own CO2 footprint?

Isabelle needs real-time data from her smart meter!

aliunid shows Isabelle's electricity consumption�and CO₂ footprint in real-time.

aliunid will tell Isabelle when the best time is to do her laundry…

…and when to charge her electric car at low carbon intensity.

With aliunid, Isabelle can buy renewable energy in real-time.

How can we help Martin to keep his grid stable?

With higher shares of electricity from renewable energy, the need for �balancing production and consumption is getting more challenging.

Extending the grid infrastructure to allow for decarbonization �requires significant investments.

Martin needs real-time data from his electric grid.

How can we help Martin to keep his grid stable?

aliunid will allow controlling flexible loads to avoid overloading the grid.

aliunid will show in real-time the how much �EV charging is contributing to grid load.

In aliunid, we build an energy system that breathes. �It inhales when the sun shines…

…and exhales when there is little renewable energy in the system.

Join our Team! We have three vacancies.�www.aliunid.com

Till Richter, Head Data�till.richter@aliunid.com

aliunid AG

Bleichemattstrasse 31

5001 Aarau

Many thanks! Stay in touch

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2 Local Sustainability Booster

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3 Vertical Farming

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4 NEST Building Modelisation

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6 Heat-spots in Bern

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7 DLT for the energy transition

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8 Load-shifting to Incentivize

Renewable Energy

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9 Cool Urban Spaces

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Project Nr 2

Local sustainability booster

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Team: Dylan Johnson, Oliver Paul, Lucas Tochtermann

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2

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The Challenge

• In order to achieve the goals for the swiss energy strategy we must increase sustainable energy production and consumption
• There are metrics for the current status of the expansion of PV, renewable heating and e-mobility
• We want to find out which are the key influencers of these sustainable indicators at municipality level

The Idea

• If the group can identify important factors leading to an increase of these sustainable indicators, resources and funds can be allocated in an efficient way

2

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Local sustainability booster

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What we did

• Gather data (socio-demographic, weather, topographic, infrastructure, political and electricity-costs)

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• Visualize correlations, spatial data and do feature engineering

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• Run statistical and Machine Learning models and compare the results

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• The idea! Find a function x -> y which describes the relationship between demographic features and renewable behaviours

2

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Local sustainability booster

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Visualizations

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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Visualizations

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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Extracting spatial image data and merging with district and municipality data

Significance testing linear models

EV share

• Income (+), electricity tariff (-), pop density (+) with older populations (40-64 +), carbon taxes (+)

PV share

• Larger homes (+), Swiss citizens (+), young (+), old (-) adult populations, temperature (+), carbon taxes (-)

Renewable heating

• Pop density (-), income (-), temperature (-), swiss citizens, (+), young adults (-), child populations (+)

2

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Local sustainability booster

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Feature importance XGboost models

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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While we cannot extract meaningful weights like in linear modelling, we are able to extract feature importance for a far more powerful model

Game theory application using SHAP values

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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By using a game theory approach we can compute the interactions between features, and their effect on the target variables.

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The overall importance of these values aligned with the feature importance analysis

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Here we can identify how the model will behave based on varying feature values

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This approach allows us to generate artificial data to test scenarios or possibly policy interventions

Game theory application using SHAP values

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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EV penetration

PV penetration

Renewable heating

Game theory application using SHAP values

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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How do changes in feature values impact the models predictions? Could this be used to test new interventions? - For EV penetration

Model prediction higher value

Model prediction lower value

Game theory application using SHAP values

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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What impacts the models distribution at a single municipality level?

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Dardagny, Geneva

First insights / policy recommendations

• Electric Vehicles: Lower electricity tariffs significantly increased uptake. Targeted charging grants at MP level.
• Solar PV: Target information campaigns on older populations
• Renewable Heating: Make efforts to provide options in urban centres

Next steps

• Improve model with more relevant data and hyperparameter tuning
• Build a pipeline using future updated data
• Identify and communicate results to municipalities with high potential
• Add temporal data to understand how policy interventions have impacted behaviour in the past

2

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Local sustainability booster

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Questions ?

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Team

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Dylan Johnson dylan@turkjohnson.com

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Oliver Paul oliverjpaul@gmail.com

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Lucas Tochtermann lucas.tochtermann@bfe.admin.ch

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2

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Local sustainability booster

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Project Nr 3

Vertical Farming

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Team: Melanie Mathys, Daniela Ovalles,

Sven Brieden & Ben Strachan

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3

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The Challenge

• Identify (and illustrate) ideal locations for vertical farms.

The Idea

1. Identify relevant factors
2. Look for data
3. Concept:

Interactive Map

• Implement

3

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Vertical Farming

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3

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Vertical Farming

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Data/Resources

Factor interdependencies …

3

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Vertical Farming

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Next steps:

• Complete and clean data
• Look at the challenge as an optimization problem!
• Make an interactive prototype�

3

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Vertical Farming

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Questions & Answers!�

3

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Vertical Farming

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Project Nr04

NEST data-driven building

Jerry Overton, Logan Wilt, Martin Horeni, Wolfram Willuhn, Gonzalo Casas, Benjamin Huber, Philipp Heer

NEST 04

The Challenge

Manage buildings in ways that are more sustainable and energy efficient

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The Idea

Train a machine-learning algorithm to maintain a target temperature

NEST 04

What we did

Used genetic programming to automatically explore thousands of models

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The prototype

Best pipeline: XGBRegressor

11 Optimal Features Found

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NEST 04

Our results suggest automating the adjustment of windows blinds and power settings to help maintain a target temperature

Resources/Data

NEST Open Building Data

Google Collab

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Next Steps

Run with larger data sets

Explore new features

Team:

Jerry Overton, Logan Wilt,

Martin Horeni, Wolfram Willuhn, Gonzalo Casas, Benjamin Huber,

Philipp Heer

NEST 04

Project Nr 6

Wärmcity Bärn

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Team: Moritz, Izzi, Matthias, Oleg

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6

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hack.opendata.ch/project/762

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Slack: #06_heat-spots-in-bern

GitHub: https://github.com/matthme/heat-spots-berne

Challenge: #MakeOurDaytimeDataGreatAgain

Develop a transfer function ... to correct for the estimated radiative bias of each station of the monitoring network.

Resources / Data

• Raw temperature data of all stations of the monitoring network
• Meteorological parameters measured at the three reference stations
• Publications - Burger, M., Gubler, M., Heinimann, A. and Brönnimann, S. (2021)

TBD:

• Land-cover data
• Building geometry data

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Project Nr 7

DLT 4 financing the energy transition

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Team: Sabine, Phoebe, Lorenz, Marcel, Saeed, Vasileios

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7

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Governance of DLT 4 Financing Blockchain

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The Challenge

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• Design an incentive model for all platform participants
• Design the transition from a central to a fully decentralised platform
• Create a strategy how the platform could achieve network effects

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The Idea

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Create a blockchain network and platform to facilitate the

financing of small and mid sized PV installations

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7

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Governance of DLT 4 Financing Blockchain

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7

Governance of DLT 4 Financing Blockchain

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7

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Governance of DLT 4 Financing Blockchain

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Incentives

• Micro-Financing and Lending
• Socializing risks and creating governance
• Create a Certificate System for Green Energy Investment

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Transition ideas

• Start with local communities (in Switzerland)
• Kickoff event

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Ideas on creating network effects

• Adding a social component to this:

forum for exchanging questions and also a website showcasing progress

Project Nr 9

Cool urban spaces

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Team: Stefan Keller, Felix Reiniger, Lucas Buchli,

Fabio Zahner, Remo Steiner, Jurek Müller

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9

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The Challenge

• Collect citizen suggestions to cool down open spaces in the neighborhood (also community sugg.)
• Bring the ideas to the attention of owners/responsible authorities
• Facilitate the realization of popular suggestions

The Idea

• Map based mobile/web application
• Suggestions can be rated and further developed by the community
• Working groups can be started in the App
• Contact to land owners can be facilitated via a land register API query

9

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Cool urban spaces

What we did

• Created a mockup

9

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Cool urban spaces

Cool city

Helvetiaplatz

3005 Bern

Public

Urban gardening

Current situation

Often empty. A lot of unused space.

Anna

(creator)

Often meeting place

for demos.

Peter

Comment:

Suggestions

Could be used for urban gardening

Anna

(creator)

Maybe in collaboration with the museums?

Peter

Comment:

Helvetiaplatz

3005 Bern

Public

Urban gardening

Pros

Would cool local climate and provide food

Anna

(creator)

Opportunity to do community work

Peter

Comment:

Cons

Food will be stolen.

Lea

Comment:

Support

Cool city

Cool city

Team: Stefan Keller, Felix Reiniger, Lucas Buchli,

Fabio Zhaner, Remo Steiner, Jurek Müller

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Resources / Data

• Frontend with flutter
• Backend with python
• API to the land register (only limited information)

Next steps

• Prototype: Supporter chat, User management
• Query land register API for cantons where the API exists
• Potentially negotiate with cantons about building land register API

9

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Cool urban spaces

What we did

• Created a mockup
• Tried to get to land owner information via API -> Information only about responsible land register office.
• Created a prototype with the core functions.

9

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Cool urban spaces

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2 Local Sustainability Booster

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3 Vertical Farming

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4 NEST Building Modelisation

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6 Heat-spots in Bern

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7 DLT for the energy transition

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8 Load-shifting to Incentivize

Renewable Energy

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9 Cool Urban Spaces

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