Using AWS solutions to control Giga-Watts in Swedish households

Easyserv is a new innovative Swedish startup that uses AWS services to help the transition to the new energy landscape forming in the world. Devoteam has provided the expertise making this possible.

The challenge

The global challenge of climate change is prompting a major shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, water, and nuclear power. However, this transition imposes a significant strain on electricity grids, which need to support increased electricity demand while lacking the inherent balancing mechanisms of fossil fuels.

Current solutions under discussion involve costly expansions of predictable energy sources and substantial investments in grid capacity. These endeavors are both expensive and time-consuming. Here, Easyserv envisions playing a crucial role.

Easyserv’s innovative solution involves leveraging a vast network of approximately 1 million heat pumps installed in private properties across Sweden. These heat pumps, combined with the heat storage within these households, function as a massive battery. This battery can efficiently shift power consumption from peak to off-peak hours during the day without compromising the residents’ comfort.

Moreover, Easyserv’s technology optimizes homeowners’ electricity usage by directing it towards the most cost-effective hours, resulting in significant cost savings, especially when electricity prices fluctuate throughout the day. This vision aligns with the imperative to address climate challenges while also offering economic benefits and grid stability.

The solution

The solution consists of a hardware device (SG-A) that can control almost all types of heat pumps. Each SG-A then connects to a cloud solution in AWS, where the heat pumps are controlled and monitored in groups or individually. Devoteam has helped Easyserv use AWS services to build a cost-effective and robust solution that can scale up to hundreds of thousands of connected heat pumps. The services are monitored in real time and the AWS setup with server-less functionality and managed services makes the whole system very robust and reliable.

By using ready-made services such as AWS IoT Core, as well as other AWS services, Easyserv and Devoteam have together quickly been able to offer a full platform for savings and enable power control on a large scale.

Devoteam has been a very good partner here both to help Easyserv develop the best solution but also for their solid expertise on how to set up a robust and secure cloud solution in AWS. rnAWS and Devoteam, it’s a perfect match for a startup!

Tommy Simonsen, CEO of Easyserv

Results

Devoteam has helped Easyserv in many ways during the journey towards their offering. Devoteam differs from many other companies by being able to offer excellence in several areas in a team setup, such as in addition to the traditional architect, backend, frontend and project manager roles, also DevOps, user behaviour and usability studies, competence in data analysis and machine learning, etc., where different competencies work in different phases during the course of the project. At times, Devoteam has worked almost like Easyserv’s development department, which is very valuable for a startup where resources often are scarce. Being able to scale up and down during development is also very valuable. Devoteam also has the competence to take full responsibility for the entire operations while Easyserv as a company prepare to scale up, which gave Easyserv great flexibility.