SAIL x Baseline.Energy Hackathon 2024

The SAIL x Baseline.Energy Hackathon was a great success. Over the weekend, 62 students worked day and night digging deep into AI and machine learning with a real time series of data for business applications in the energy sector.

Between Friday 13 and Sunday 15 September 2024, the “Stavanger AI Lab x Baseline.Energy” Hackathon took place at University of Stavanger. During the event, organised by SAIL and Baseline.Energy in partnership with Lyse, NORA.ai and Lyspæren, the participating students could showcase their AI programming skills facing the challenge of energy consumption forecasting, as well as creating the baseline for an industrial building. 

The aim of the Hackathon was to combine academia with the industry. By working on the problem, participants had a chance to encounter, and possibly find a solution to, a real-life task from the energy industry. Moreover, it was a great opportunity to broaden their horizons and skillset, network, as well as to gain some insight and help from the expert panel, who was present during all of the three days. 

The Hackathon’s objective was to forecast an accurate electricity consumption (baseline) of an industrial building for two days, a weekday and a day on the weekend. On Sunday, the students had to submit their code and results for evaluation and present their findings in front of the judges. 

The participants competed for internships at Baseline.Energy and cash prizes of 10 and 15  thousand NOK. 

The jury consisted of experts from both the University of Stavanger, and the industry, represented by Baseline.Energy,  Bjørn Grønning, CEO/CTO of Baseline.Energy and Flexpartner.Energy; Merkebu Zenebe Degefa, Associate Professor in Electric Power Systems in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Stavanger; and Alvaro Fernandez Quilez, Leader of Stavanger AI Laboratory (SAIL) and Associate professor in AI in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Stavanger.

On the last day of the event, participants had to run the code live in front of the audience to check for any mistakes, as well as to showcase the difficulty of execution.

The contestants were evaluated in five categories, including clarity of presentation, potential impact and user-friendliness of the solution, innovative approaches or techniques in time series forecasting, and interpretability of the model itself. The accuracy of the forecasts was done by checking the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) on the hidden test data, and remained the main criterion of the assessment. 

After the pitching session, the jury had a really difficult task of ultimately choosing the winners of the Hackathon. The top three pairs with the most points were as follows:

Third place and a cash prize of 10 thousand NOK went to Mohammad O. and Halvard E.

Second place and a cash prize of 15 thousand NOK went to Titouan R. and Mara S. 

First place and the internships at Baseline.Energy went to Maroof M. and Mohsen M.

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who participated! Thank you for your great work and we hope to see you next time!