Watt a day!

The Watt Works hackathon, delivered in partnership with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), was an opportunity for the creative and curious to get stuck into the trove of data that SSEN has been sharing to the public via their Open Data Portal, with the aim of transforming the data into something more tangible for the layman; an important step in bringing the public on board for the UK's journey to Net Zero.

The event was a culmination of months of collaborative preparation between Hack Pompey and SSEN, and we're very happy to say that the results exceeded expectations!

We were excited to welcome plenty of fresh faces attending their very first hackathon, but also a healthy contingent of returning Hack Pompey veterans, ready to have another crack at the People's Choice Award™️ and bringing their experience, enthusiasm and humour to set the tone for the day.

"Although I wasn't keen on what we made, that was arguably the best Hack Pompey I've been to" — Ethan Egerton, The Runtime Terr0rs

The Challenges

As the electricity network evolves, the rapid increase in domestic solar panels, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and home batteries is creating new voltage stability challenges. These fluctuations are often invisible to the public and difficult to quantify for many stakeholders. Without clear visualisations and communication, it is hard to build shared understanding, influence policy, or inspire collaborative action towards Net Zero.

To tackle that problem, two challenges were set, both with the aim of utilising all that data that SSEN has been collecting:

Participants jumped on the challenges and we had an excellent show & tell at the end of the day followed by the awarding of some very well deserved prizes.

Watt Happened at Watt Works?

While the official start time was 9am, a handful of hackers were welcomed into Richmond Building early – clearly keen for the welcome breakfast! As they checked-in, participants grabbed their lanyard, free Watt Works T-shirt and excellent yellow SSEN beanies. The latter coming in just in time for the cold snap that followed the weekend!

Once in, participants were able to tuck into the breakfast. We pushed the boat out this time and provided a range of pastries from Farmhouse Bakery in Southsea, a wonderful local independent with a gorgeous array of baked goods. The Cinnamon Buns and Almond Croissants were divine! Hot drinks, fruit and biscuits were ready alongside to wake everybody up, ready for the day ahead.

Ryan and the SSEN team kicked us off with the opening talk, setting the scene and providing the hackers with the all important "why" to help direct their focus. After the opening talk, we all headed over to the Future Tech Centre (FTC) for the hacking to begin!

We would usually do a team-forming session when we get to the FTC, but for the first time ever we didn't need to! Everyone already had a team, or had formed one organically during breakfast. Hack Pompey’s slogan is Meet New People, Make Something Awesome. It was nice to see the first half being accomplished so early!

"Hack Pompey is a great event to meet like-minded makers. Everybody is willing to bounce ideas off each other and help each other learn" — Michael Parker, Down with Scotland

The morning session of a hackathon is usually spent pinning down a project idea as fast as possible, and in the case of hacks like Watt Works, wrapping your head around the resources provided. The SSEN team really shined here, walking the room and doing a marvelous job of helping participants get a grasp on electricity distribution and the copious datasets they provided. We know this made a huge difference to the quality of output at the end of the day, so pat on the back there to the SSEN team.

Ryan also did everyone a solid for this event by providing a React JS starter project ready to roll with connections to the NeRDA API and some bundled in charting libraries. This seemed pretty helpful for people and we’re hoping to be able to do the same for future events, possibly including a Python starter too.

By lunch, we reckon most people had a pretty good idea of what they were going to make, and some had already made plenty of headway already.

At Hack Pompey, we're always trying to make sure we get the basics right: the welcome, the timings, the venue, and most important of all: the food. It's a huge relief when lunch goes down well, and it certainly did at this event! Continuing the theme of using local and loved vendors, we were proud to provide a premium range of baguettes from Southsea Deli, a delicious range of plant-based Panuozzo's from Stones Throw Kitchen, and some tasty tray-bakes from Farmhouse Bakery — a huge shout out to these local companies for making our event (and Portsmouth) a delicious place to be.

After lunch everyone cracked on with their projects, and it's about time we talked about how they got on.

The Show & Tell

At 4pm we all went back over to Richmond Building for the Show & Tell. As the lecture theatre filled up, we could feel the nervous energy. 9 teams were shortlisted to present their solutions for the Watt's Happening and Flex Quest challenges and every single one of them did a stellar job.

The event marked the first use of our home-made voting system for the People's Choice Award (the People's Voting System?). It performed much more reliably than our use of StrawPoll last year, despite being vibe-coded in a couple of hours the day before the event in true hack style.

Finally, before we get on with the winners a note on the awards. We think this year was our best selection to date, we had Raspberry Pi Advent Calendars, snazzy gaming peripherals, board games (including the much sought after Stardew Valley), a Kitronik Arcade Max, HackyPi, a Wacom One drawing tablet, a £40 Tesco Giftcard (we know what the student truly needs), and plenty more! As was the whole event, these awards were made possible with SSEN's funding – thanks SSEN!

Without further ado...

The Winners

People's Choice Award Winners

Down With Scotland

The People's Choice Award, as voted for by all the participants on the day, was awarded to "Bring Down Scotland".

Michael, Bethany, Scarlett and Anna built a dashboard and custom API pulling together Scottish grid data from SSEN's datasets, then created a simulation to see if you could take down Scotland's electrical grid using only kettles. Spoiler: you can!

Try it yourself at downscot.michaelrbparker.com or check out the code on GitHub.

It's becoming increasingly clear that humour is the quintessential ingredient for winning the People's Choice Award!

"Watt's Happening?" Challenge Winners

Grid Heartbeat Monitor

Peter and Neerav pulled voltage data from Portsmouth substations via SSEN's NeRDA API and turned it into a clean, user-friendly web app.

Their subtle "next-step" idea that we think sealed the deal was suggesting SSEN replace the static iconography on the NeRDA Portal with a small "live" heartbeat graphic showing each substation's status – packing plenty of signal into one tiny visual for an at-a-glance view of grid health. Genius seems obvious in retrospect!

Check out their project on GitHub.

"Flex Quest" Challenge Winners

Neighbourhood Nodes

Lalita and Ruchika (who came all the way down from London) built an interactive app where users pick a neighbourhood struggling with a power incident and work in groups to help solve it. Using Smart Meter database postcodes, the app lets you either team up with random people or choose your own group.

They also created 3D plots and interactive scatterplots showing how different interventions affect the issues in real-time. Not bad for less than a day's work!

Check out their project on GitHub.

Honourable Mentions

Portsmouth Independent Party

Kieran, Jeetaditya, Dillon, Nikhil and Denis were back for another crack at the People's Choice Award after their previous appearance at Hack Pompey: Sea Change.

Continuing with their (possibly unhealthy) rivalry of Portsmouth vs Southampton, this time they built a tool to compare live power consumption between the two cities on a per-person basis.

They came to realise the app might actually be useful, so they developed it further to let you compare consumption data from any two bulk supply points, giving you energy efficiency comparisons across different areas. Check out the code on GitHub.

Powa Powa

James and Rieona created an educational game that teaches how electricity grids work through a Puyo Puyo-style puzzle. Players either stabilise the network with upgrades and demand management, or throw chaos at it with storms and high demand events.

Play it right now and see if you can keep the lights on. It’s made for desktop.

Power Flex

Sage and Jane designed a physical card game where you balance and decarbonise a growing power grid without causing instability.

You start with inefficient fossil fuel generators and consumers, then work to replace them with wind, solar, tidal, hydro and nuclear – but not all power sources are equally flexible or output the same power during day, evening and night. You'll need to diversify your generators and offer incentives to consumers to shift load and keep the grid stable.

Word is SSEN might even commission a proper production run of this one!

The team created a prototype with physical cards on the day, but since then they’ve gone ahead and made a playable online version. You can give it a go here. It’s currently best played on a desktop machine.

Acknowledgements

Watt Works was an amazing day and it wouldn't have been possible without a committed organising team and the generous support of SSEN. The SSEN staff played a major part in both planning and delivery. They assisted with logistics throughout the day, chatted with participants, judged for the challenges, and provided those sweet beanies for attendees. Their involvement went above and beyond what we'd normally expect of an event partner.

Thank you so much Gemma, Fraser, Matt, Taz, and Rob!

And of course, a huge thanks to the Hack Pompey Team of volunteers:

• Charlotte: Video, full event branding and social media.
• Hannah: Photography and making us all look good.
• Ming: 3D printing the People's Choice Award trophy, logistics and general creative chaos.
• Sage and Jane: Reception heroes and logistics.
• Jack: Logistics, morale and vibes.
• Tom: Planning, logistics, closing MC and shortlist organisation.
• Ryan: Planning, logistics, opening MC, and serving the traybakes with a spoon so no one got sticky fingers.

Closing Remarks

Watt Works was one of our favourite hackathons to date. The quality of projects was exceptional, the atmosphere was welcoming and productive, and our collaboration with SSEN was a genuine pleasure.

We are already looking forward to our next event in Spring 2026. Watch this space and follow our socials!

Thank you to everyone who attended, and a huge thanks to all the volunteers. We're excited for the next event already, hopefully you are too!

Words from the hackers

"Hack Pompey was an incredible experience! As someone relatively new to hackathons, I was nervous at first, but the supportive atmosphere and the challenge itself really inspired us. Working with real SSEN data to create something that makes complex energy concepts accessible and fun was definitely very rewarding. The best part was seeing our idea come to life, from struggling with Android Studio crashes to finally being able to interact with our stability meter and actually get grid flexibility with a 3D Scatter plot! The feedback from the judges and other participants was invaluable, and it's definitely motivated me to keep building innovative tech. Can't wait for the next one!" — Ruchika Jha, Neighbourhood Nodes

"Hack Pompey was my first ever hackathon and it was totally worth it! The entire team was very welcoming and the challenges allowed you to build something that truly interests you. I was able to meet great new people and would definitely recommend this to others." — Neerav Durve, Grid Heartbeat Monitor

P.S. If you want to see a few more photos of the day, check out this drive.

P.P.S. If you were at Watt Works and you’d like us to link to your socials or your projects, email us at [email protected] and we’ll update the page accordingly, or send us a message on Discord.

P.P.P.S. We used lanyards instead of wristbands this time to better distinguish those who are comfortable with being photographed. That said, if we’ve published a photo of you when we shouldn’t have, sorry about that, please let us know and we will remove it.