29 Hours of Hacking for Greater Energy Efficiency

29 Hours of Hacking for Greater Energy Efficiency in Buildings

From 22 to 23 February, everything at TU Wien revolved around one thing: synthetic data. During the Hackathon: Watt’s Up? Hack for Energy Efficiency, participants sacrificed sleep in the name of solving one of humanity’s biggest dilemmas:

Most of us want homes, hospitals, shopping centres, and schools. But they come at a cost: buildings are heating up more than just their interiors – they’re warming the climate too. In Europe, buildings account for 40% of total energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. Clearly, we need to use energy much more efficiently. Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a key role here – but training good AI models requires high-quality data, which is often hard to get due to strict privacy regulations.

Synthetic data is a game-changer. It allows us to create realistic, privacy-friendly datasets that can serve as the foundation for innovative solutions to cut energy consumption. That’s exactly what the hackathon focused on: generating reliable synthetic datasets.

Enter Synthetic Data – Ahoi to the Hackathon Winners!

Three outstanding teams came out on top – congratulations to the winners!

1st Place:FHV - Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences & Budapest University of Technology and Economics
2nd Place:UBIMET Group
3rd Place: Central European University, Technische Universität Wien
Capgemini (Airbus Helicopters & University of Salzburg)

Huge thanks to the organisers and partners

The hackathon was fully funded by EuroCC 2 and the EU project MODERATE. A huge thank you to all the organisers and partners:

Technische Universität Wien / Energy Economics Group Inc
Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC) & EuroCC Austria
e-think energy research
Vienna Data Science Group (VDSG)