Challenges & Solutions

Challenge #1: Fight Climate Change Today by Creating the Carbon Neutral Office Building of Tomorrow

How might we help convert existing office buildings to carbon neutral smart buildings of tomorrow for owners without increasing operating costs - and before it‘s too late?

Brainstorming leads:

  • How can an existing centralized energy system in an office building be replaced with a distributed, decentralized sustainable energy system?
  • How could we solve the obstacles which occures when converting an existing building into a carbon-neutral office building?
  • How can we find a smarter solution to utilize HVAC components in order to supply energy demands of a modern office building, using connected data solutions?
  • Which parts of an old office building requires retrofitting, what is the smartest way to retrofit these components?
  • How can we design a smart system in order to prevent wasting energy on electric devices in office buildings?
  • How can we improve the energy system in an office building to be more dynamic and robust while utilizing local energy sources?
  • How can we integrate a smart office energy system into the local energy grid and make it a part of the ecosystem?
    What kind of smart solutions can we utilize in order to minimalize the loss of energy in a modern office building?

Challenge #1 - Solutions

Team ALFA

Team members: Akshay Umesh Prem, Bhargav, Christian Wiezorek, Daniele Berardo, Fernanda D'Emery, Johannes Schnitzler, Niklas Wagner, Patrick Dennis Witt, Rohit Kumar Gnanasekar, Sara Gonella

Team BRAVO

Team members: Arunava Acharyya, Brantyopati Wibisono, Emanuel Vallarella, Marta Sosinska, Martin Kremser, Milosz Sabady, Najam Memon, Phuong Dung Nguyen, Rishabh Golchha, Tharindu Magedara

Team CHARLIE

Team members: Ásbjörn Skarphéðinsson, James Kronk, Jean Paul Peteza, Markus Kazmeier, Marten Schlüter, Meret Mora, Natasha Witto, Poornima Sundarrajan, Simon Kunz, Tom Petzold

Team DELTA

Team members: Alexa Bresan, Ankush Venugopal, Asfand Yar Munir, David Wilson, Jeffrey Blaylock, Kate Rushton, Matthew Ferry, Micah Woldu, Michael Castle, Rahima Rahima, Yu Steven Zhang

Team ECHO

Team members: Akbar Bagaskara, Arseniy Sleptsov, Benjamin Iwuchukwu, Ji Song, Maria Mazuera, Martin Rümmelein, Stathis Alexandrou, David Pflanz

Challenge #2: Create Innovative Corporate E-Mobility Services to Drive Zero Carbon Transition in Transportation

How might we help companies to enable their employees to use electric cars instead of combustion cars in their private and work lives to drive the zero carbontransition?

Brainstorming leads: E-Mobility is a worldwide mega trend. Electric Vehicles (EVs) keep inner city areas free from emissions and air pollution. They are regarded as clean, innovative and attractive.

That’s why more and more employees are demanding EVs as a private or company car, also because of interesting tax subsidies in Germany for the first years. And the companies are confronted with these demands without having real solutions.

But for the companies there are as well lots of barriers and questions:

  • Which EV cars and which car management should be chosen for this demand?
  • Should charging for private EV cars be free as a company’s service?
  • How many and what kind of charging stations at the work place and the employees’ homes are needed / necessary due to battery capacities and possible charging times?
  • Where is the limit of the company’s responsibility for the charge@home installations?
  • How to handle the unclear tax situation for financial benefits, e.g. with the reimbursement of charging electricity costs for the employees? And how will it be processed practically?
  • How can the demand of the Millennium generation for a car sharing model instead of owning a car be covered?
  • Is an APP needed to coordinate the user experiences and company’s interests? What features are mandatory, what are optional?
  • What kind of smart models can solve the problem of insufficient ranges for the employee’s holiday trip?
    How can the company measure the impact of the company’s fleed on Zero Carbon Transition?

User (group) information: Persona in company

  • management: CEO, CFO, CIO, Fleet manager = confronted with the employees’ need
  • user 1: manager with the right of having a company car, interested in sustainability, energy and zero carbon transition, ca. 15.000 km/y
  • user 2: salesman with the right of having a company car, no real interest in sustainability, energy and zero carbon transition
  • user 3: employees without the right of having a company car, but strong interest in using an EV due to strong engagement in sustainability, energy and zero carbon transition
    transition?

Assets: The participants are supplied with the necessary detailed information material (studies, figures, graphics, statistics).

Challenge #2 - Solutions

Team FOXTROT

Team members: Jorge Ruiz Amantegui, Arun Koomar Nagaraj, Massimiliano Banini, Mateo Toro Cardenas, Novi Dwi Saksiwi, Paola Bonilla, Tzyi Wu, Reem Sobh, Nithin Kumaravalasu Thirunavukarasu, JeetSingh Bhatia, Jonna Jasmin Güven

Team GOLF

Team members: Maria Luisa Scarano Pereira, Khanh Linh Tran, Owais Malikzada, Alsu Galifanova, Sorcha Ní Mhuimhneacháin, Allan Calixto Severo da Silva, Tobias Huber, Anna Haltenberger, Juo Yu Liao, Anoob Basheer, Gabriela Montoya Hernandez, Risvan Ubais

Team HOTEL

Team members: Luka Smajila, Raghav Sharma, Philip Widmaier, Sebastian Bereda, Nina Viktoria Heine, Ailin Huang, Felipe Rigone Franceschetti, Niklas Richter, Hoda Ataee Alizadeh, Hsin Hsin Fan

Team INDIA

Team members: Santiago Carrillo, Juan Medina, Maria Betancourt, Alejandro Rodriguez Amaya, Cherie Hsu, Pauline Neuholz, Min Xu, Mohd Aiman Khan, Shubham Agarwal, Jonas Schumacher, Yasir Hamid

Team JULIETT

Team members: Manuel Baptista, Cristian Buita, Maciej Wozniak, Marianthi Alexidou, Will Cargioli, Lukas Löw, Franciska Fellegi, Veronika Gerich, Mohammadsaleh Khalili, Juan Sebastian Lopez, Neah Falkenburg, Abdallah Alshanawani

Team KILO

Team members: Muhammad Hafeez Saeed, Emilia Chojkiewicz, Mateusz Kaluza, Oscar Damanik, Jorge Ballesteros, Jake McKean, Nathan Davies, Wei Ying Li, Monica Troilo, Maximilian Bredow, Alba Forns, Sören Grothkopp

Challenge #3: Make a Factory Hyper Energy Efficient with the Power of Your Smartphone

How might we combine reducing carbon footprint and increasing productivity for operators of industrial plants by exploiting the wide range of possibilities of common smart mobile devices?

Brainstorm leads: Industrial production plants usually consist of a typical set of components like pumps, valves, piping, heat exchanger and process tanks. The driving part for moving the liquids are pumps. Most often the flow control is carried out by valves. A plant is run by an operator, who is responsible for the productivity, safety, reliability and also for energy efficiency. However, the energy saving potentials are often not visible for the plant operator. Though, plants are typically equipped with a reasonable amount of sensors, these are used for the continuous control of the production but are not used for time-to-time identification of energy saving potential. Additional wiring and additional equipment are too expensive. To solve this dilemma, the wide range of possibilities of common smartphones can be used. They can be used independently from all other plant installations and assets, and have a large range of sensors embedded. Thus, any independent energy saving detection device would be a perfect tool for plant operators (or a „digital carbon footprint consultant“). At the same time, the plant reliability would also increase (the general correlation between energy efficiency and reliability of plant components is well-known).

User information: The users are plant operators with an overall responsibility for safety, reliability, productivity, employees and assets. The operator is typically an engineer, decisive and interested in improvements. More and more, he is faced with energy management requirements and audits (with lack of data).

Assets:

  • Simple physical demonstrator of a sub-plant (pump with valves and flow circuit)
  • Demonstrator of a pump
  • Layout and schematic sketch of a typical sub-plant
  • KSB Sonolyzer App (identifies pump efficiency by noise)
  • Sound files

Challenge #3 - Solutions

Team LIMA

Team members: Abdelrahman Khattab, Aigerim Shamshidin, Luisa Pesenti, Josef Iferi-Ebin, Davis Kuma, Jonas Sikorskis, Qije Cai, Robin Besson, Stephanie Rawi, Vamsi Krishna Dokka, Vibhu Kumar, Ladislava Lipinova

Team MILK

Team members: Anton Pollak, Ashish Kutval, Fabian Chico Moreno, Irem Dinc, Jonas Beer, Joshua Colley, Mikael Cognell, Réka Sólyom, Shu-Jung Liu, Pranay Addepalli, Sophie Ashcroft

Team NOVEMBER

Team members: Alexander Löbe, Alexander Scholz, Amon Lahr, Anna Lisa Reich, Irin Wilson, Jeffrey Thomsen, Job van Voorst, Jonas Gehring, Luja von Köckritz, Marc Prüßmeier, Mateusz Sierakowski, Samuel Wohlstein, Yu-Hsuan Li

Team OSCAR

Team members: Antonio Mires, Elsa Kendrick, Jens Bue Johan Hillers, Chloe Coral, Tikshala Gothankar, Noran Kamal, Jamal Alostaz, Robin Griehl