TwinERGY is a European funded research project and the Bristol pilot will install energy technology in 12 homes who already have solar panels – to help you manage your energy use in a smarter way.  

Below we refer to the Bristol pilot as ‘the project’. 

The purpose of this document 

This document is intended to provide information to participants in the project, people whose personal data is being collected, used and shared by the organisations involved. 

The organisations are Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol City Council and University of Bristol.  

The information should help you make informed choices about whether to share your data, keep track of consent forms you are asked to complete during the project and answer questions you may have.   

If you would like further information please contact: twinergy@kwmc.org.uk  

Roles of organisations in the project  

• Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) is responsible for managing community engagement in the project. 
• Bristol City Council is responsible for the project management of the project. 
• University of Bristol is responsible for the technical aspects of the project.  

Project aim 

The project aims to  

1. Test new technology to increase the efficiency of energy use and generation in buildings 
2. Place citizens at the heart of the energy market 

By collecting data about participants, the organisations above will be able to contact them about taking part in the project activities and involve them in trialling the energy technology within their homes and understand more about their energy use behaviour and experiences of using the technology. 

By sharing some data about participants, the organisations will be able to coordinate the project activities and conduct the analyse the data collected in the project. 

By publishing some anonymised data (as open data) the organisations will be able to share the results and learning from this project.  

Data terms 

Below we explain what types of data are collected in the project, the access given and how data is managed in the project. 

Data types and access 

Personal data is data from which a person can be identified as defined in UK GDPR. If data can be combined with other information to identify a person, that data will still be ‘personal data’. Personal data includes sensitive data and behavioural data described below. 

Sensitive data is personal data that describes integral features of who we are e.g. reveals racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data (where used for identification purposes), data concerning health, a person’s sex life or sexual orientation. 

Behavioural data is personal data collected about your actions and activities, which can include data collected online by technologies and websites that track, monitor or analyse your behaviour. 

Societal data is data that incorporates elements of personal data (e.g. location, health, energy use data) but does not need to include personal identifiers that link back to us as individuals, in order for it to be useful. If societal data is anonymised it can be made open data. 

Closed data is data that is only accessible to one person or organisation. 

Shared data can take multiple forms, three are: 

Named access – data that is shared only with named people or organisations 
Group-based access – data that available to specific groups who meet certain criteria 
Public access – data that is available to anyone under terms and conditions that are not ‘open’ 

Open data is data that anyone can access, use and share but it usually requires you to attribute the source. 
 

Data processes 

Data anonymisation is the process of turning data into a form which does not identify individuals and where identification is not likely to take place. 

Data aggregation is the combination of individual data records into groups to avoid individuals’ data being identified. 

Data categories 

Registration information is the data participants provide when signing up for project activities, which is necessary to take part in the project (e.g. name, email, address, etc.). 

Self-reported information is the data participants are asked to provide which is useful to the goals of the project but is not necessary for taking part in the project e.g. it can include sensitive data (such as gender and race) which will be collected anonymously.  

Project generated information is the data that is generated by or with participants during the project (e.g. home energy consumption data and behavioural data). 

Data collection and use  

Registration Information: we have asked you to complete the following forms which ask for personal data so that we can contact you participating in project activities and arrange deployment of the technology: 

• Expression of Interest Form (KWMC) 
• Research Ethics Form – participant information and consent form (University of Bristol) 
• Acceptance Letter, including terms and conditions (Bristol City Council) 
• Data Workshop Registration and Pre-Survey Form (KWMC)

Sensitive information: we have asked you to complete the following forms which asks for sensitive data so we can better understand who takes part in the activities. It is optional to complete this form. 

• Equalities form (KWMC)  

Project generated information: we will be installing equipment in your home and asking you to complete surveys, which will collect the following data:

• The Acceptance Letter explains the equipment being installed in your home:
  • 2 x Equiwatt Smart Plugs + energy monitoring device (power capsule) + associated app [all homes] – the app collects personal data and energy data
  • Home energy storage battery + Passiv Systems device and app [some homes] – the app collects personal data and energy data
  • Building survey [all homes] – collects data about your home and energy use and includes some personal data
• Data Workshop Evaluation Form (KWMC) – asks for your feedback on the workshop and asks for some personal data

Data storage and deletion  

Data collected in the project will be stored securely by the organisation’s involved and deleted a maximum of 5 years from collection. Access to personal data will be limited.   

Data sharing  

When KWMC, Bristol City Council or University of Bristol collect your personal data and this needs to be shared between these organisations and with others (e.g. other partners in TwinERGY) this will be specified in the form where you will be asked for your consent for us to collect and use that data. 

The organisation collecting the data will put in place a data sharing agreement to manage this process in a secure manner compliant with UK GDPR and the data will be transferred in a secure manner.  

Publishing open data 

This section will be updated to set out what data will be published openly, where it will be published, under what license and why – when this information is available.

Reporting concerns 

When you complete project forms that collect your personal data they will include contact details to ask for further information or to report your concerns. 

You can also report any concerns to the project Data Protection Officer  

theo.tryfonas@bristol.ac.uk Tel: 0117 428 2489 

Your data rights 

Under the UK Data Protection Act (2018) and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have explicit rights around data about you (personal data). To exercise these rights, you can follow the processes laid out here. 

The right to be informed 

You have the right to be informed about how personal data about you is being collected, used and shared. This document aims to provide much of the information you might want however if you have any specific questions you can contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk  

The right of access 

You have the right to access the personal data about you held by the organisations involved in the project. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk to request this information  

The right to rectification 

You have the right to rectify or correct personal data about you which the organisations hold if it is inaccurate or incomplete.  Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk  to request this.  

The right to erasure 

You have the right to erase or remove data we hold about you. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk  to request this.   

The right to restrict processing 

You have the right to restrict or ‘block’ processing of personal data about you that the organisations hold. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk to request this.   

The right to data portability 

You have the right to port or transfer the personal data about you that the organisations hold. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk to request this 

The right to object 

You have the right to object to the use of personal data about you that the organisation holds for specific purposes, including direct marketing. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk to request this  

Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling. 

You have a set of rights around automated decision making involving the use of personal data about you that the organisations hold. Please contact twinergy@kwmc.org.uk to request this information 

Responsibilities 

This section describes the responsibilities of the participants, the organisation and third parties play in ensuring the privacy and security of participant’s personal data.   

Your responsibilities 

When completing forms that ask for your personal data, please only use trusted and secure devices.  

Take care to keep your passwords safe and secure. Only use strong passwords that include a mix of letters, numbers and symbols. 

Keep your antivirus software up to date and install the latest security updates for your device’s operating system.  

You can find more advice on protecting your data and devices here https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/section/information-for/individuals-families  

Our responsibilities 

In handling your data, KWMC, Bristol City Council and University of Bristol will ensure that we comply with any applicable data protection and privacy legislation including the UK Data Protection Act (2018) and UK GDPR.  

Your personal data will be stored securely on our servers and we have internet security procedures in place.   

If there is a data breach or privacy concerns we will contact you. 

Third party responsibilities 

The responsibilities of third-parties regarding data collection and management are outlined in the TwinERGY Acceptance Letter in the terms and conditions section.  

Updates  

We will update the data use license, including adding links to the applicable consent forms, as you are asked to make choices around the collection and sharing of your data.   

If the event of new government policy on data protection and privacy, a data breach or concerns being raised by a participant or a regulator, we will also review and update the data use license as necessary.

We will contact participants in the event of any of the above.

A smarter approach to your energy use – be part of the energy revolution!

TwinERGY is a three-year EU funded research project. It is testing an Energy Demand Response Framework, a technology solution that supports households with sustainable energy generation (e.g. solar panels) to actively manage and adapt their energy use to market fluctuations through the help of data and automation. With the aim of saving energy, money and carbon emissions.

KWMC is working with the project partners to develop a framework for engaging citizens within the four pilot projects in Germany, Greece, Italy and the UK. The engagement framework will build upon The Bristol Approach, a co-design methodology developed by KWMC, Ideas for Change and Bristol City Council. We are also supporting the pilots to develop metrics for diversity and inclusion, data use licenses and citizen learning events and activities.

The Bristol pilot started in spring 2021 and will work with 12 homes and a community building. It is led by Bristol City Council and University of Bristol, working in collaboration with KWMC and Ideas for Change. It will have a focus on understanding how the use of technology can improve citizens’ awareness and management of their energy consumption. The pilot will seek to involve people who experience fuel poverty and those most impacted by oppressive systems based on disability, classism, racism, gender bias and ableism – and as a result of this are often under-represented in energy research.

For more details on the pilot contact: twinergy@kwmc.org.uk

The combined infrastructure required to tie all of these disparate parts together can be expensive or cumbersome to put together from scratch and has frequently slowed projects down.

Our Urban Monitoring system, a collaboration with the University of Bristol, is a research project that aims to create an open-source, flexible framework that will reduce the implementation time of the data-gathering research projects from months to weeks and enable a secure, resilient and scalable collection of data.

A further improvement over previous solutions, is that all of the data is kept within Bristol, as it’s stored on OPCR.

Currently, 8 homes on Cotham Hill are using the Urban Monitoring suite to collect information about noise pollution. They each have smart sensors, an edge device and can view their own information and securely by logging into their personal dashboard on OPCR.

As part of KWMC’s We Can Make and Twinergy projects, we are taking this further – two prefabricated homes are being built in Knowle West, ready for the the owners to move in early next year. Each home will be filled with smart sensors, energy monitoring and generation devices and everything will be tied together with the Urban Monitoring system.

The OPCR network allowed for rapid development and iteration, with the project initially coming together over a weekend as part of the EU vs Virus hackathon. It has proved to be an invaluable resource, bringing together hundreds of people in the local area and has grown to include a long and unexpected list of actives:

• Collecting Prescriptions
• Food Shopping
• Dog Walking
• Gardening
• Rubbish Clearance / Litter Picking
• Adding Credit to Electricity Keys
• Office Support
• Surge Testing Site Volunteering
• Well-Being Box Delivery and Support
• Giving Lifts
• Cleaning
• Heavy Lifting/Moving
• Meal Collection
• Befriending Calls
• D.I.Y.
• Deliveries
• Flyering

Many strong connections have been made through use of the site and many activities are now organised offline, peer-to-peer. Without the OPCR network, the ongoing development work and hosting wouldn’t have been possible.

We have been working closely with Bristol City Council and their wider volunteering provision, Can Do to improve our system and explore if and how it could be rolled out to the rest of the city, including the over 11,000 Can Do members.

Part of this work has included Penetration Testing, to ensure the security and integrity of the web application. The OPCR network is unique, being hosted and secured within Bristol as connections to the wider-web are opened only where needed and with strict security policies in place, to protect all sensitive and personal information.

The system has allowed for a development server to be used for testing updates as well as a PenTest server to allow for external testing.

The project is built openly and collaboratively on GitHub.

Part of this will include co-designing richer, more engaging visualisations to Bristol’s Open Data Platform, such as Solar Plots.

These new features will be developed, hosted and served on the OPCR network, allowing the Council to augment its existing public platform by utilising the advanced power of its private and secure, local R&D network.

We believe this approach to development could form the framework for future Council R&D for the public’s benefit.

KWMC has a portion of the Open Stack environment and projects, as well as their own Wireguard VPN server for development access, an open-source Nginx Proxy Manager for domain management, a LoRaWAN gateway and ChirpStack management tool, and an internal GitLab to host private code. This portion of the network, is KWMC’s “cloud” environment.

Not everything on the network is locked-down however, in fact this very website is being served from KWMC’s cloud, as well as other projects outlined on this site, such as To/Fro, BristolAirQuality.co.uk, Urban Monitoring Dashboards and more.

This safe, local environment allows for training, R&D and rapid deployment. The number of users accessing parts of the network, whether the inner circle or open web applications has grown rapidly over the past couple of years. There will be more training provided in the new year, starting with workshops around Machine Learning.

This invaluable resource fits squarely with Bristol’s One City Plan, especially around connecting up every community, a city-wide innovation ecosystem and responsible innovation – it’s amazing to be part of this development and look forward to seeing more communities connected up.

We created a simple live dashboard, displaying the machine bookings for the day and are now working with a developer to create a new bespoke dashboard, as part of our wider Community Dashboards project, that will include our latest social media posts, more Fabman information as well as other community date, such as air quality.

In the new year, we will be building additional functions to allowing us to book out all machines in one space with the click of a button, for when we have workshops or events, such as Maker City and also creating an internal finance tool, to simplify invoicing for our members.

As a trusted partner, we’ve been given the green-light from Fabman to start building our own IoT devices that will allow us to provide members with smart lockers, door access and simplify materials purchasing.

The OPCR network provides the research, development and hosting space for this new framework and utilising the core features of KWMC.cloud, the development workflow for deployment of projects on the platform is also going to streamlined and overhauled, to allow for more easy and seamless updates to all of the web applications hosted on the network.

Once the dashboard and deployment methods are in place, we then want to open them up to the wider-community, sharing with them the tools needed to create dashboards that are relevant and personalised to them.