Smart Energy Hackathon — SolarCoin’s SolarPi team wins!

Originally published 2017–09–20

September 13, Bangkok, Thailand

After 29 long hours of coding all but one team managed to submit creative digital smart energy solutions to advance the energy transition in Southeast Asia. The winning team “SolarPi” developed a solution that logs solar energy production data, writes it to a blockchain and uses this record to automatically claim SolarCoins (a Digital Asset that incentivizing solar energy producers).

The “SolarPi” teammates serendipitously met and matched during a team formation exercise during the opening night. Robin Clart, CTO of Thailand based blockchain startup OmiseGO and judge at the Smart Energy Hackathon said: “Given the fact that the SolarPi team formed on site on Friday night, it is remarkable that this team delivered the most innovative solution”. The SolarPi team also drew considerable support from the globally-distributed Community of SolarCoin members.

Major Breakthroughs for the SolarPi team are here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXd-x_UI-3w

About SmartEnergy Hackathon:

The Smart Energy Hackathon is an innovation vehicle with the mission of evolving strong teams with viable solutions into real companies. Representatives from local incubators and accelerators KX, Techgrind and Startup Bootcamp were in attendance to scope potential teams to incubate. Incubators and accelerators can offer support services, mentorship, capital and training for startups and is a crucial component of building energy ecosystems in Southeast Asia. So are the Venture Capitalists, that were represented at the event as well. Nio Liyanage, Director at Hong Kong based Nest VC and judge at the event who has been at several hackathons before states: “I am genuinely impressed by the quality and variety of the submissions. The products developed, creativity, commercial application and pitches were of such high standard, it was a gruelling process to select a winner in this competition”. One of the winning teams have concrete plans already: “We are stoked and will definitely take this idea forward. The first step is to look for $30,000 funding to spend on further product development”.

The Smart Energy Hackathon was enabled by strategic sponsors including PTT Public Company Limited, Engie, Provincial Electricity Authority, Lykke, Whapow, Blue Solar and Mint Coworking Space and co-organized by GIZ, TechGrind, CalCEF/New Energy Nexus, Chulalongkorn University Innovation Hub (CU) and Knowledge Xchange for Innovation (KX).

Further links:

Event Website: www.smartenergyhackathon.com

All Submissions: https://smartenergyhackathon.devpost.com/submissions

Event Facebook: www.facebook.com/smartenergyhack

Event Twitter: www.twitter.com/smartenergyhack

Organizer Descriptions:

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

GIZ is an experienced service provider owned by German government with approximately 20,000 employees spread over more than 130 countries. GIZ offers demand-driven, tailor-made and effective services for sustainable development from balancing economic development with social inclusion to environmental protection. In Thailand, GIZ implements projects and programmes on behalf of several German Federal Ministries, the European Union and funding partners such as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Toyota Motor Corporation, as well as with the Government of Thailand.

More information at www.giz.de and http://www.thai-german-cooperation.info