SHIFT and the Urban Data Collective are trialling an urban data commons to find new ways of optimising renewable energy generation.

At SHIFT we’re delighted to share that we are supporting Urban Data Collective (UDC) to trial their Urban Data Exchange (UDX) platform in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We’ll be working alongside partners including London Legacy Development Corporation, UCL East and Aeternum to gather and link environmental data such as particulate pollution, solar intensity and weather data with energy generation data, to better understand how these factor into effective use of energy generation infrastructure. 

As East London continues to expand and evolve, there is an increasing need to make urban spaces more sustainable and equitable. One way to enable this is through the use of urban data commons platforms, allowing for purposeful and impact-driven sharing of data among different stakeholders. Breaking down organisation and data siloes allows us to figure out the determining factors in behaviour and efficiency of key infrastructure, such as for renewable energy generation. 

Through this initial use case, we aim to explore to whether the efficiency of existing solar arrays can be optimised by dynamically managing maintenance schedules, for example, understanding the effect close proximity to a busy road can have on solar panels, whether this is mitigated by heavy rainfall and how cities can forecast this data to better manage renewable energy sources. 

“The learnings from this trial will have really wide relevance for East London and cities globally – using existing but largely unused data from across organisations to optimise existing infrastructure is a good example of how innovative use of data is helping us tackle some of the biggest issues facing cities today” 

Nick Turner, Data and Digital Manager at SHIFT

SHIFT is committed to identifying and scaling solutions that are needed to tackle the biggest issues facing cities today: health and wellbeing, the Climate Emergency, and effective and equitable Movement of people and goods around the city. 

The UDC SHIFT innovation trial has kicked off in February. Stay tuned for updates! 

Get in touch if you’d like to learn more: hello@shiftlondon.co.uk