Energy consumption monitoring and steering.
Green Values is an intelligent energy solution that helps commercial buildings get their energy consumption under control.
Above: On the right, the ready developed energy management web application for commercial buildings.
Context
40% of today's energy consumption comes from commercial buildings and industry. It is estimated that the global energy demand will double over the next 30 years, yet at the same time, the CO2 emissions should be halved.
In the future, we will relate to energy in new ways. Green Values vision is that buildings and communities will share their energy surplus with each other. Consumption and power generation will be managed autonomously and in full interaction with each other.
Green Values is a Trønder Energy intrapreneurship project. I joined the team as a consultant in 2018 and worked closely with the team over one year. As often in the startup world the roles are not strictly defined, and everybody builds on each other’s abilities. My responsibilities were testing of the in-market pilot, interpreting the feedback and to contribute to the strategy and business building of the company.
Project goal
With Green Values businesses will be able to share surpluses, reduce their energy costs and, at the same time help the society to reduce its climate footprint. Our team wanted to make managing of the energy consumption easy and user friendly and turn something abstract as energy to understandable measures.
Process
We followed agile digital product development that was steered from the developer side by sprints and from the design side by collecting user and market insights, structuring the information, listing needs, prioritizing functionalities and filling backlog for developers. We had daily standups and sat all together in the same space to enable natural communication flow and effortless information sharing.
Below: Sketches along the process, initial customer journeys, application content sketches and market perspectives.
Key takeaways
This project was an intense crash course to energy consumption and energy markets. How they function and how easy it is to look past the numbers that are not informative. This was something we wanted to change and managed to create communicative references of kilo- and megawatt use. For example, in a local chicken farm we could refer to the hours they could warm the space with the saved energy or how many trees it would require making up the CO2 emissions. The solution also helps Green Value customers to communicate their energy consumption forward, for example how much energy the production of an egg has required.
This kind of solutions can create transparency of energy consumption and lead towards standardized measurement and communication.
One year of scrums, retrospectives and standups gave routine to the digital devevelopment processes. Same location helped us to maintain the routine, to stay focused to the key areas and pivot fast when needed.