Vattenfall Energy Award
On 20 November Vattenfall Energy Award was handed out at KTH Energy Dialogue for the third time. All three winners, that received prizes for the best MSc thesis in energy field, were former students of KIC InnoEnergy Master School.
Vattenfall started a tradition of supporting KTH students in 2012 and this year it once again donated a sum of 40 000 SEK to award the best MSc thesis projects in energy field. The prize was divided between three winners and announced at Energy Dialogue 2014 on 20 November.
This year the jury of four KTH professors, a representative from Vattenfall and an expert from the Ny Teknik newspaper had to select three winners from 34 received applications. Members of the jury included Prof. Björn Palm, Department of Energy Technology; Prof. Semida Silveira, Department of Energy Technology, Energy and Climate Studies (ECS) group; Prof. in Power Grid Technology, Lina Bertling; Prof. Folke Björk, Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering; Susanna Baltscheffsky, Editor in Chief, Ny Teknik and Magnus Berg, Portfolio Manager Technology Assessment, Vattenfall. The main criteria for selection were level of communication, novelty and contribution to solving energy related problem in the world or in society.
All three finalists were students of KIC InnoEnergy Master School that offers MSc programs in sustainable energy with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship.
The 3rd prize in this year's Vattenfall Energy Award of 5 000 SEK was awarded to Judith Maresa Hartl (MSc SELECT) and her thesis "The Energy Kiosk Model for Electrification, Status Quo and Future Strategies" in the field of Energy Engineering and Management. The jury awarded the prize "for a visually appealing thesis on a topic of importance for billions of people in developing countries. It combines practical experiences from several kiosk businesses in Africa with a theoretical analysis of the business models, identifying challenges and success factors for this type of businesses.”
The 2nd prize of 10 000 SEK went to Rita Bailão Martins Fernandes (MSc RENE), who wrote about "Efficient Volvo Bus Cooling System, Using Electrical Fans - A comparison between hydraulic and electrical fans" within the Energy Technology discipline. The prize was awarded "for a very clear and well-structured thesis with multitude of interesting illustrations and graphs, awakening the interest to read and study even in a person who is not otherwise looking for solutions to the studied problem. For the expert in the area, though, the results should be highly interesting.”
Finally the 1st prize of 25 000 SEK was received by Bram van der Heijde (MSc Smart Cities) for his thesis work "Big Data Analytics towards a Retrofitting Plan for the City of Stockholm" in the Industrial Ecology field. The work summarised and evaluated the processing of large datasets, so-called "Big Data", for nearly 15 000 buildings in Stockholm with the goal to find patterns and track inefficiency in energy consumption. The jury awarded this project with the 1st prize “for a thesis where recent methodologies are used for studying a timely topic. Big Data and Smart Cities are buzz words of our time. The thesis demonstrates a methodology to evaluate measures for decreasing the energy use and the environmental impact of the complicated system we call cities.”
A short summary of the MSc thesis projects that received Vattenfall Energy Award 2014 could be found below.
Judith Hartl_The Energy Kiosk Model for Electrification.pdf (pdf 695 kB)