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===== Hot or not for solar - Energy customer profiling made easy =====

> **Want to know who's hot** for putting a solar power system of his or her roof?

> **Why spend unnecessary money** for a non-specific and misdirected marketing effort?

> We know **your next solar customer**! 


----


===Mission===

**Our mission is to help increase the penetration of renewable energy production**


===Value proposition===

> For **energy service providers and utilities** who want to target specific solar power prospects, our product **hot or not for solar** is an **energy customer profiling service** which produces a **prioritized list of customers** with an affinity for solar. Unlike traditional approaches our service takes advantage of hidden information from social demographic and economic values and uses machine learning algorithms for deriving the prospects affinity. In order to improve our algorithms we run surveys (quizzes) injected in popular websites such as "20 Minuten" or our customers website.

>> Simplified: For **utilities** who want to target specific solar prospects, **hot or not for solar** uses social data and machine learning to derive a **short list**.

>>> Further simplified: **Hot or not for solar** - Energy customer profiling made easy

===Main User-Story===

As an energy service provider I want to know which prospects have an affinity for installing a solar system so that I can run personalized and focused marketing/presales activities.

===Further potential customers are===

  * Public institutions such as Cantons and Municipalities who want to tailor information/communication/projects
  * Planning and engineering companies / product developers who want to develop and sell new products


===== Background Information about the project =====

=== Data ===

BEN Energy (https://www.ben-energy.com) provided a sample data set (approximately 5000 records) with information about utility customers which included social demographic and economic information.

For detailed information see here: [[project:hotornot:Data]]

=== Goal ===

The main goal of our project was to test whether social demographic and economic information is of value in determining potential new solar customers. For background information about the business goals see section [[project:hotornot#Value proposition|Value proposition]].

=== Method ===

In order to test the hypothesis the team used **Microsoft Azure machine learning** and **R** (both using random forest algorithm). Furthermore the teams tested which attributes have most influence on the results. In parallel team members put together a list of properties they thought would influence the results. After a first iteration, extraneous attributes were removed from the machine learning process.

Finally the team concluded the project by creating a website to showcase the machine learning result as well as the business view.

=== Results / Findings ===

The team was able to derive a specific list of customers with an affinity for solar. Based on the results the conclusion was that social demographic and economic data play a secondary role. However, with a larger, and probably more accurate, set of information the social information may become more useful. For interest groups and businesses, the team recommends doing further research.
===== Team =====

  * Paul Affentranger / affentranger@afca.ch
  * Christian Eggenberger / eggenberger@afca.ch
  * Moritz Kulawik / moritz.kulawik@lu.ch / [[user:Moritz]]
  * Claire-Michelle Loock / claire-michelle.loock@ben-energy.com [[user:cloock]]
  * Urs Mändli / urs.maendli@energie360.ch
  * Derrick Oswald / derrick.oswald@9code.ch / [[user:derrickoswald]]
  * Erwin Sägesser / erwin.saegesser@nis.ch / [[user:erwinsaegesser]]
  * Nadim Schumann / nadim.schumann@qbis.ch

===== Links =====

  * [[project:hotornot:Data]]
  * [[project:hotornot:R]]
  * [[project:hotornot:Azure machine learning]]
  * [[project:hotornot:Teamwork]]

{{tag>status:concept energy}}