EDF
Visualising Energy for London 2012

As the official electricity supplier of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, energy monitoring is a key initiative for EDF and their commitment to delivering a positive legacy for the Games.

Applied Works helped EDF create an innovative real-time dashboard that visualises energy usage at venues across the Olympic Park, as well as Tower Bridge and the EDF Energy London Eye.

With live energy streams from six iconic London venues at our disposal, we set about making sense of the data by uncovering energy stories and placing context on the usage trends for each building.

We met with energy managers and studied the data in great detail, in order to understand what was influencing the consumption at each building. It was clear that to contextualise the energy we needed to tap into additional feeds, specific to each building.

At the London 2012 venues (Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and Basketball Arena), where consumption is less consistent, we mapped energy data against construction milestones, test events and competition hours.

At Tower Bridge, daylight hours and bridge lifts affect consumption. Over two years of operational records were digitized for the project, including information such as the degree and duration of each bridge lift.

Tower Bridge control room

Bridge lift operating record

We designed and built Power the Games Live, a web-based dashboard displaying real-time energy for the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velodrome, Basketball Arena, Tower Bridge and the EDF Energy London Eye.

As well as live demand, the dashboard displays energy consumption over several years, comparing trends for different timeframes against contributing factors specific to each building – for example, visitors can see for themselves how daylight or weather influence consumption, while milestones reveal which events make an impact, such as Earth Hour or the London 2012 Games. In addition, energy stories show how a building’s design plays an important role in optimising energy usage.

A smartphone optimised version of the Power the Games Live site has been developed to allow visitors to the Olympic Park to see the live demand of the venues they’re visiting during the Games.

We also created an app that lives in the EDF pavilion, just behind the Olympic Stadium at the Olympic Park.