When did the project officially start?

In march last year (2019) and another phd has started after our last Update.

How many people are working on the project?

We have hired two additional Master students/interns to help with the project. One will optimize batteries for houses and one will focus on forecasting.

What is the biggest challenge so far?

Acquiring the data to work with. Like data from home automation or smart meters and privacy limitations. Now the project uses anonymized data that doesn’t contain locations. Due to the corona outbreak the instalment of new home automation energy consumption meters has been stalled and we are unsure when we can continue this.

Is there a lot of contact with the private partners and what does the collaboration look like?

The number of private partners has grown and they mainly help us with data and connect us the households for the instalment of smart sensors and such.

Have the research questions been adapted during the course of the research?

The main questions have stayed the same, but the process and smaller questions around practical applications have changed. Some of the data needed additional information and other data was not necessary, so we have changed that.

What phase of the research are you in now?

We have collected some data and developed a framework to process the data and collect energy usage profile combined with demographic. On neighbourhood scale we used the usage profiles the predict energy consumption. This complemented the weather based prediction model and that has made it more accurate.

Solar forecasting is also a part of this, we can predict how much solar panels you can add to become self sufficient or make the whole neighbourhood self-sufficient.

What is your ultimate goal?

Functional analytical techniques for self sufficiency planning and energy balancing systems.