2022 in Review & A New Website for the New Year!
As the first month of 2023 is coming to an end, here at OCF we’re taking a moment to pause and share our 2022 highlights and take a quick look at what awaits us on the 2023 runway.
A growing team
From the perspective of the team, the biggest news is OCF growing from 5 to 11 people. It has been exciting to welcome new faces and fresh perspectives.
Open-source machine learning R&D
Expanding our team has allowed us to invest more people power in the work that is at the heart of our mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions: machine learning research.
Here’s some of what we got up to in the ML department:
Conducted R&D for multiple ML models. The code for each of these models is open source and available on GitHub:
Released tens of terabytes of weather and satellite data - all publicly and openly available on Hugging Face.
We had dozens of contributors to our open-source projects!
Participated in two conferences: AI and Electric Power Summit in Rome and Solar+Storage 2022 in Birmingham where Dan Travers presented how Open Climate Fix has worked with National Grid Electricity System Operator on solar forecasting.
Project highlights
As we’ve started to see ideas take shape, we’ve gotten to see the fruits of our labours as PV forecasts are beginning to be put into production, and we’re building user interfaces and a web application that will decrease carbon emissions.
In July, OCF kicked off a new project funded by Innovate UK for Open Source Solutions for Net Zero to create site-level forecasts using satellite imagery & deep learning. Work on the forecast is well underway, and our team has developed database architecture and the first iteration of a PV Site API. The frontend design is also ready to be implemented:
In November, we presented OCF’s work with National Grid ESO at a dissemination event that invited National Grid employees to see how our national solar forecast is having a positive climate impact in the control room.
Building on the work we did with National Grid ESO in 2022, Open Climate Fix is pleased to announce we have been offered an extension on the Nowcasting PV forecast project for 15 months out to early 2024. In addition to further improving the machine learning models, the project extension includes work on the UI and researching how we present probabilistic information to the control room.
A growing user base
We’re excited to be heading into 2023 with a growing community of users interested in our PV forecast. From energy traders to solar farm managers, our contact list is definitely growing, and we're eager to test the mettle of our forecasts in the real world and watch them make an impact. To give a few examples, we signed a consulting deal with Habitat energy for wind energy forecasting, gained commitment from our first commercial PV forecast client and engaged with another half a dozen users who are trialing our product before the summer.
Furthermore, we are pleased to announce international expansion with our first user engaged from outside the UK!
Evolving the company
As our projects grew in 2022, we found that a clear strategy using “OKRs” (Objectives and Key Results) has been useful in focusing the team’s efforts on what we value. We have two layers of OKRs - annual and quarterly for more short-term goals.
In addition to clear objectives, as different funding opportunities have fallen into place, we’ve been able to put a clear financial plan in place for 2023 and beyond to 2024.
Wider industry impact
Looking to the broader industry, OCF got its first taste of how our work can have a meaningful industry impact. In collaboration with Sheffield University and Exawatt, OCF submitted a written response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into onshore solar energy generation in the UK, which has led to an invitation to give verbal evidence in January 2023.
Our submission made the point that there is no technological or financial constraint to the UK hitting its target of 70GW of solar PV capacity by 2035. However, grid integration still poses the main challenges — time to establish grid connections and the ability to manage the grid with high levels of solar penetration.
We would love to see clear targets for solar grid connections for the network operators and better data available to allow the industry to understand and plan for variable renewable generation such as solar PV.
A look at what’s ahead for 2023
A new website! We are delighted to announce that we have just launched a new website. We hope you enjoy the lighter, sunnier look!
With a larger team and more projects on the move, we are looking forward to engaging with some other upcoming projects in both the UK and overseas in 2023!
From all of us at OCF, we want to thank you for your support and collaboration throughout 2022 and look forward to working with you in 2023!
