Teams from Alpha-I and Power2U hacked their way to €5,000 prizes at the second edition of the Hack the Wind energy hackathon, held under a deal between industry advocacy body WindEurope and European sustainable-energy innovation outfit InnoEnergy.

The decision was announced by a jury experts in the wind sector, led by mentor companies EDPR and Siemens Gamesa, and including Recharge editor-in-chief Darius Snieckus.

“We believe in the benefit that can be obtained from open innovation environments, as way to generate new ideas on the challenges of our industry," said Antonio de la Torre, chief technology officer of Siemens Gamesa. "Hack The Wind gave us deep insights on what cross-functional teams are to achieve, combining blockchain knowledge, data analytics capabilities, understanding of the energy domain, and not least, front-end development skills.”

António Vidigal, chief executive of EDP Innovation added: “We believe that our industry is moving from capital intensive to knowledge intensive, and EDP is betting on an Open Innovation Model – which allows EDP to leverage on external talent. It was also the right place and time to launch our EDP Open Data initiative, which puts digital and domain knowledge together. We look forward to partnering in new hackathons.”

Emilien Simonot, renewable-energy technology officer at InnoEnergy, said: “After a successful first edition last year, this year has been marked by a confirmation of the relevance of the format thanks to the high degree of preparation of the participating teams, resulting in imaginative and impactful solutions to the proposed challenges.”

The teams were challenged with two tasks over 48 hours during the Global Wind Summit, with Siemens Gamesa mentoring work on blockchain applications for hybrid systems optimisation and EDP Renewables mentoring the predictive maintenance and O&M optimisation solutions.

Two other entrants, Chlorophyll and ODS AI, won the €2,000 prize for the best technical achievement on each challenge, while InnoEnergy awarded an In-Kind prize — namely, business coaching services — to both Alpha-I and Ginkgo.

WindEurope deputy chief executive Malgosia Bartosik stated: “Hack The Wind is consolidating as one of the must-be events in the agenda of anyone working with digital innovation in the wind business.”