Welcome to CleanerGrid

At EirGrid, we develop and operate the national electricity grid, leading the transition to a sustainable, decarbonised energy grid. Laying the foundations for this transition while maintaining security of supply is one of the greatest challenges we currently face.

If you are a university student who is passionate about delivering this transformation, CleanerGrid offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to our work.

CleanerGrid is a joint EirGrid and SONI competition for third-level IT, engineering and data science students. Through participation, you will help transform people into considered users of electricity – allowing them to flex their usage according to carbon intensity or price. Design and develop your ideas, and present them in front of our leading experts and researchers.

Using data found in EirGrid Group Smart Grid Dashboard and the SEMO website, work in teams to develop and present a live prototype, in the form of a beta website or app. The winning concept will then be further developed and proposed for integration into the EirGrid Group Smart Grid Dashboard.

 

Besides the chance to win up to €2,000, the competition will offer you the opportunity to network with other like-minded people and industry experts. You will also have the opportunity to assist in our goal of transforming Ireland's energy system and reaching our targets for reducing emissions. We may also offer the opportunity for the prototype to be developed in our incubator and incorporated into the Smart Grid Dashboard.

Sign up to the challenge as part of a team of max. 6 members. The event will go live on Thursday 2 March, 2023. Applicants are encouraged to build multi-disciplinary teams across third level education in Ireland  with skills in engineering, computer science, data science, behavioural science, project management or website/graphic design.

Teams can sign up by contacing research@eirgrid.com with their information (university, team members) and will have until midnight, Sunday 9th April, 2023 to submit their design. Multiple teams can enter from the same institution however, individuals may not be a part of multiple teams.

The entries must include:

• A live prototype
• A brief document explaining how the prototype works, how it can shift behaviour, any calculations performed, and the data feeds used.

 

By participating in the CleanerGrid data competition, participants acknowledge that all intellectual property rights in and to any materials produced for the CleanerGrid data competition shall be the sole and exclusive property of EirGrid, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

To the extent that such intellectual property rights do not vest in EirGrid automatically, applicants shall assign them to EirGrid on request, whenever that request is made.

The top finalists will be selected and invited to present their solution in front of the judging panel and other entrants at the closing ceremony. The final presentation should be a 10-minute presentation with 5 minutes at the end for questions.

The criteria for judging the entries/finalists will be based on but not limited to:

• Fulfillment of requirements
• Ease of user interface
• How innovative the approach is
• Market impact
• Complexity of used technology
• Solution maturity
• Comprehensive/throrough presentation
• Comprehensiveness of design solution
• Geographical location of the user shall be considered (for example to aid network congestion)

We are looking for creative and innovative ideas to shift consumer behaviour to use electricity at more sustainable times. You are free to create any solution that could influence behaviour (e.g. a text, notifications, automatically turning off appliances etc.)

EirGrid make available a wealth of data on our Smart Grid Dashboard and also through our Single Electricity Market Operator (SEMO) website. These feeds will be the input data for your beta websites/applications. You are welcome to be as creative as you want with your design.

The data feeds provided by EirGrid are complex and the publication of these relies on the successful running of market systems on a daily basis. Certain feeds/reports may not always run successfully, therefore the final prototype must be resilient if a certain feed(s)/report(s) is not available.

Examples of feeds which are available on the SEMO website:

• Forecast demand
• Forecast renewable production
• Forecast renewable dispatch down (due to excess wind/solar)
• Scheduled interconnectors flows
• Forecast market price on a 30min basis
• Forecast output on a per unit basis
• Examples of feeds available on the Smart Grid Dashboard:
  • Real-time frequency
  • Forecast wind
  • Actual wind (note actual can be less than forecast due to forecasting errors and/or dispatch down of wind)

 

 

On the Smart Grid Dashboard, you must click VIEW in the table first to download the .CSV file.

On the SEMO website the option of viewing it as a table must be clicked first and the option to download the .CSV file will become available on the right.