2 minutes to read With insights from... Francesco Schirinzi Advanced Software Engineer Here’s how we put our challenge to the teams at HackZurich 2022: “This winter, Switzerland faces power shortages everywhere. Households, companies – everyone will be affected. How can we harness innovation to use energy more intelligently and avoid blackouts? We’re counting on you!” We wanted to let participants showcase their expertise and find sustainable solutions. The HackZurich 2022 hybrid format meant we had 500 participants there in person, and 800 more connecting remotely. Our challenge made a big splash: Saturday we saw 80 people turn up to our workshop on site, and more joined online. Ten teams of three to five people each then took on the challenge. Each team ultimately produced a great idea. But one stood out because of how it operates technically. And that was GridGuard. This project puts a large swarm of private smart devices under central command. It allows the government to shut off non-essential, private devices across the country at the press of a button – preventing a blackout and minimising the impact on our lives. The GridGuard team of Marc Bitterli (frontend developer), Chiara Truel (graphic designer) and Philippe Voinov (backend developer) won because their solution offered: an original idea implemented in an innovative way a good description (project and source code usage) a good user experience a well-developed solution (small commits, clean code, etc.) Plus, they incorporated multiple and advanced technologies: software and hardware both frontend and backend technologies Wi-Fi connection between hardware and web platform simulation of >100,000 devices connected via a local event channel library (library not created at HackZurich) WebSockets used (connected to the event channel) to provide live data You can find out more about their project here: https://app.creatorspace.dev/marcb/projects/gridguard GridGuard won the HackZurich 2022 What’s more, we weren’t the only ones giving it up for the GridGuard project. On top of winning the Zühlke Challenge, it also scooped the HackZurich 2022 main prize of CHF 5,000. Big congratulations to the team!