Nexxtlab | Aaltra

Context

When energy prices are skyrocketing, it's essential to have a good view of your consumption. Luxembourg-based Energy Transition Accelerator Nexxtlab joined forces with Aaltra to develop Smartbirds, an app that connects with their easy-to-install dongle.

Together we created an app that helps users to give insight into their energy consumption. And Smartbirds makes it easy to share your data with your energy community and contribute to a more sustainable energy landscape.

APPROACH

Digital meters are convenient to track your energy consumption, yet grid operators cannot access all the data.

Nexxtlab, which has developed a complete ecosystem facilitating the interaction between all the energy players focusing on the user needs, wanted to close that gap.

The Luxembourg based organization developed a dongle that communicates with digital meters and asked us to visualize this information.

To tackle this challenge in the best way, we started with a workshop focusing on Nexxtlab's vision and the added value for the end-user.

The result of that exercise is that we give end-users insight into the consumption of their devices and, at the same time, make predictions about the production of their solar panels.

By using weather data, for example, we calculate how much solar energy will be produced. At the same time, we calculate the usage using user profiles based on residents' habits.

Design

One of the most challenging aspects of developing Smartbirds was the design. Energy is a very abstract concept. We can show users where their energy comes from at any time.

In Luxembourg, where Nexxtlab launched the app, open data allows us to determine what percentage of consumption is solar energy, for example. That also helps with awareness: just because you buy green energy, it doesn't mean the energy is actually green.

SOFTWARE + IOT = AALTRA

What makes this project totally Aaltra is the combination between software and IoT. Nexxtlab started entirely from scratch with the development of its hardware.

Therefore, we were able to advise on how the dongle would work best and what protocols were needed for communication between the dongle, the phone, and the cloud.

Our technical expertise also helped make the dongle installation as intuitive as possible.

Users don't have to enter their wifi points. The dongle itself searches for networks, and the application automatically looks for dongles nearby. All the user has to do is enter the wifi password and scan a QR code on the dongle.