ShadowScope

   Idea

In today's day and age making sure your company is carbon neutral is becoming more and more important. It seems like every company has a plan or is already carbon neutral. There are multiple approaches to achieving carbon neutrality. Some of them are investing in renewable power sources like solar panels, more efficient infrastructure, recycling materials, and many other ways. ShadowScope aims to make these steps simpler by utilizing data from EO technologies and making them easier to understand through processing, visualizing data, and offering an AI interface.

🛰️ EU Space Technologies and Data Used

The main resource that ShadowScope uses is the EU satellite, Copernicus. By using satellite images, computer vision, machine learning, and shadow detection, we can visualize which places get more shade than others. By utilizing this data, we not only give more importance to EU satellites but also use already existing infrastructure.

Data used:

• CAMS data (Copernicus)
• Electricity prices (Eurostat/local government)
• Electricity infrastructure (Eurostat/local government) 
• Electricity consumption (Eurostat/local government) 
• Agriculture data (later in the roadmap)
• Land lot size, price and availability (later in the roadmap)

🏦 Space for the Financial World - Enabling Green and Sustainable Investments

Investing in green energy can be daunting at times and the risk of a failed project is always a looming threat. This project aims to fix that. By reducing the risk of failure and improving the chances of success, we're making investments in renewable energy a no-brainer.

   Market Research

Through the CPSRK app we sent the survey to around 500 companies of various sizes. We filtered the data we gathered only to include the relevant companies from the energy and finance sector which left us with a sample of 20 companies. Their interest in investing in solar energy is displayed in the following chart.

Out of 20 companies, 16 of them expressed an interest in investing in solar energy with 9 of them expressing middling to high interest in making such investments.

   Business Model

Our business model relies primarily on contract-based work with solar contractors for whom we'd do mappings of the areas in which they are planning to build solar farms. Given that green energy investments are a key part of the EU Green Deal, we're expecting to briskly integrate with the EU Funding and then further down the line integrate with banks and real estate companies as well.

Apart from cooperating with solar contractors and financial institutions, we are also offering our services to private companies and individuals wanting to invest in solar energy. For that purpose we developed a tier-based pricing model which offers five different tiers based on the size of the area customer wants to have mapped out. Tiers we decided upon are as follows:

1. Private (1 - 500 m²) -  Aimed at individuals wanting to build solar panels to increase the energy efficiency of their homes. We don't expect to generate much profit from this tier's purchases, but we find it necessary to promote clean energy sources and make them more accessible to common people. All of this is in line with EU initiatives such as Energy Communities which promote green energy and self-sufficiency among ordinary citizens. / Price: First purchase FREE, every subsequent purchase costs €300
2. District (500 m² - 20 km²) - We're anticipating a considerable interest in our services from local governments all over Europe considering the fact that many of them are making strategic investments in solar energy in an attempt to increase their towns' and their villages' energy efficiency. / Price: €5 000
3. Town (20 - 1 000 km²) - The customers interested in this tier will most likely come from the private sector. The market research we conducted indicates that there is a sizeable interest in green energy investments among the private companies, both because of the new EU regulations and the profit motive. This tier was created with a private company scouting for the optimal location of the solar farm they are planning on building in mind. / Price: €10 000
4. City (1 000 - 2 000 km²) - Tier created for the established companies in the energy business that invest in large solar power plants and need heat maps of massive areas to find the most suitable locations for their projects. / Price: €25 000
5. Custom (2 000+ km²) - Most likely customers in this tier are governments of the European countries. The climate crisis and the current geopolitical situation have hastened the rise of awareness of the necessity of achieving carbon neutrality and reducing the dependency on fossil fuels. Investments in green energy are a part of every country's strategy for the future and therefore their interest in services such as ours are to be expected. / Price: €60 000

To make our services more enticing to customers, we are also offering a massive discount in the case of successive purchases. For instance, if someone needs a heat map of the town, they will purchase the Town tier for €10 000. In case they decide that they need the specific district within that town mapped out shortly after getting the results, we'd offer them a mapping of that district at a discount price instead of the usual rate of €5 000.

    Financial Plan

We're aiming for a Q1 2023 deployment date which necessitates four months of intensive work. Taking all of the possible expenses into consideration we have calculated that the deployment cost would amount to €75 840. Furthermore, we forecasted the amount of customers we'd get within the first 18 months after launching our business. We also calculated the anticipated expenses within the same time span. The result of this was the following graph.

We predict that our monthly income would outgrow our monthly expenses roughly 6 months after deployment. The spikes in expenses are the result of further development and integrations mention in the "Business Model" section. Calculating the cumulative income and expenses, we expect ROI around the 15th month of conducting business. The cumulative income and expenses are illustrated by the graph below.

💎 Value Added

The business model we developed was designed with customers in mind. All of the interaction with customers is done through a user-friendly web app (link to the prototype below). Our addition is a simple to use and understand visualization of various intertwined data sources. The final report we deliver to our customers is called ShadowScope and is further simplified by our unique measuring unit called solar investment potential (SIP) that we assign to each area we map.

    Roadmap

🤼  Our Team

Boris Tomaš - Mentor

I am a hackathon enthusiast, I experienced almost every role in competitions. I am passionate about Innovation, Science, and Technology, thus being an Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb and a head of Internet of Things laboratory. 

David Ante Macan - Front-end Developer

I am a passionate and driven entrepreneur with a background in software development and product management. I am the co-founder and CEO of Zero Molecule, a software development company based in Zagreb, Croatia. I have always been interested in technology and entertainment, and I strive to create products that are both technologically innovative and entertaining.

Ivana Đunđek Kokotec - Financial Advisor

I’m working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics Varaždin at the Department of Economics and Department of Organization. Before joining the Faculty, I was a consultant at the consulting company Superna Ltd, an expert associate for controlling in Finesa Credos Plc, and a lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration in Barcelona where I gained extensive experience in the fields of Corporate and Public Finance, Business Process, etc.

Karlo Hajdinjak - CTO/AI developer

I am a 3rd-year undergraduate student at the Faculty of Organisation and Informatics (FOI) in Varaždin. I love working on back-end development projects, game-dev projects, and projects relating to any form of machine learning or AI.

Teodor Kolar - Back-end Developer/Data Analyst

I am a 3rd year undergraduate student at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics(FOI) in Varaždin.

I was always interested in IT and computer science and I always seek to improve my knowledge and my application of new and interesting technologies.

I have worked extensively with C++, C# and JS, including a little Python and Java.

Fran Geček - Researcher/PR

3rd year undergraduate student at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics interested mostly in computer networking, data analysis and database management.

Proficient in the use of C, C++ and C# programming languages.

David Slavik - UI/UX Designer

I am a 3rd-year undergraduate student at Faculty of Organisation and Informatics (FOI) in Varaždin (University of Zagreb). My main interests are front-end development, game development, UI/UX design, and graphics design.

Klara Škaulj - UI/UX Designer

I am a 2nd year student at Faculty of Organization and Informatics. My main interests are web development and UX/UI design.

    Prototype

Our web application prototype:

https://www.figma.com/proto/r9W26KeyhTE1WICUxkXNIC/ShadowScope?node-id=261%3A13016&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=0%3A1&starting-point-node-id=261%3A13016 

   GitHub Repository

Our GitHub repository:

https://github.com/tkolar20/ShadowScope