Alfred Nobel is claimed to have said: ‘If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.’ We all have ideas, but are they good? Will they be practical and at the same time game-changers? And, what is more important – how to not only think about them, but make them become a reality? Everyone knows that two heads are better than one. What if you invite several dozen smart people to sit down together, divide them into smaller teams and ask them to come up with the answer to a certain problem? It’s quite likely that you’ll discover ‘the one idea that turns out to be good’.
New ideas within 24 hours
That’s why every year Vattenfall holds a hackathon for its employees. IT gurus paired with specialists in other areas work hand-in-hand for 24 hours to develop ideas that will hasten our journey to our goal – freedom from fossil fuels. The hackathon teams are multidisciplinary because technology is as important as its possibility to implement in business environment. New IT solutions have to be cost-effective and must meet standards of both feasibility and practicality. Only an approach of this kind can result in applications that can be put into wide use by business. Among the many technologies explored by the participants of ShipIT hackathon 2024 was Artificial Intelligence and the huge, unexplored potential it is thought to possess. Their 24-hour-long endeavour resulted in many original and creative ideas.
Limit the amount of data to be transferred
The jury of the hackathon gave first prize to the team that created an AI solution on an Edge device that can be used on-site with image recognition, data validating and ML models. The idea that they introduced as a POC detects cable damage by using a 2K camera and an RPI5 device. ‘“Our solution can be developed further and can then be used for predictive maintenance, wire damage detection, thermal image interference, dam inspections and so on. The goal is to only deliver data to the Cloud that we are interested in – so only related to damage or failure. This limits the amount of data that needs to be transferred and thereby reduces CO2 emissions, next to needing fewer man hours and less IT/infrastructure costs’, explains Mikael Söderström from the wining team. Ulf Stolzke, Client & Network Director and member of the jury, states: ‘This idea was outstanding. It focuses on sustainability, not only when it comes to reducing our CO2 footprint, but also when it comes to reducing costs in transferring data from different sites to the Cloud.’ Ulf went on to say: ‘I want to point out, too, that this is one of the solutions that deals with our core business, our asset-driven business. The team came up with a solution that can also be extended to use in multiple situations and therefore there are many opportunities for its application in different parts of Vattenfall. A great job done and a good presentation by the team!’
While the combination of IoT and AI solution won first prize, the participants of the event also voted for what they regarded as the best idea. The team whose solution they appreciated the most came up with an idea how to shorten the time to recover systems or applications. Their AI-driven incident communication hub will directly inform users about application issues. In parallel, the solution makes the incident process more efficient by involving the correct IT specialists at the right time.
More efficient and reliable IT solutions can save a lot of money and curtail CO2 production, thereby helping to make Vattenfall fossil free.
