Biography
Ben Bowler has more than 15 years of experience in the electricity transmission and distribution sector in a wide range of roles including applied research, innovation, project delivery, network operations, business development, and energy sector regulation.
At HSLU, Ben works within the Advanced Analytics and Intelligent Energy Systems research group, part of the Competence Centre for Digital Energy and Electric Power within the Institute for Electrical Engineering. He builds, manages and delivers national and international research projects related to the digitalisation of energy systems, with a particular focus on advanced analytics. Ben has worked at HSLU since 2019 and has grown the research project portfolio to include projects relating to smart meters, energy communities, edge analytics and IoT, eMobility, decision support systems, predictive maintenance, and data privacy and security.
From 2018 - 2019 Ben worked as Energy Markets Expert at EMAX Ltd (Brussels). In his role he delivered work packages on the Horizon 2020 Flexitranstore and Interrface projects. Both projects were focused on flexibility in wholesale markets using innovative markets, energy storage, grid infrastructure, and generation. Ben's role included detailed analysis of wholesale markets, including frequency services, as well as business model design, regulatory design, and enhanced market designs for flexibility.
From 2009 to 2016 Ben worked as a business development manager and project manager for Siemens. In this role he played a central part in developing Siemens’ growth strategy for its UK electricity distribution business, with a focus on technology application and product development in cities, communities, and for industrial customers. He was also involved in business development in the offshore wind sector, as well as delivering project management work packages for National Grid.
Ben received a Masters of Engineering (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bristol University (UK) in 2005. In a voluntary capacity, he also led the IEEE Switzerland Power and Energy Society Chapter from 2019 to 2022 (pes.ieee.ch)
Milestones
I am proud to work with a dedicated, talented team. Here are some highlights from recent months:
February 2022: Awarded funding for Innosuisse project Skylight Connect. SkylightConnect supports commercialisation of VIA's Skylight product by researching and prototyping edge implementation of NILM on redundant mobile phones and other IoT devices. SkylightConnect improves data privacy, enhances models with user feedback, and de-risks data interfaces to smart devices.
https://www.solvewithvia.com/
December 2022: Awarded funding for Innocheck mPlug - Bus-Powered M-Bus Gateway, focused on data interfaces for smart meters, with Gantrisch Energy
September 2022: Paper: Business models of an AI marketplace for energy systems with focus on demand response. Braulio Barahona, Benjamin Bowler, Colin Gounden, and Antonios Papaemmanouil (Elsevier Special Issue, DOI pending)
May 2022: Delivered V2G Use Cases, state-of-the-art, and grid service analysis, including definition of simulation approach for EVFlex project
March 2022: Paper: IoT-Based PV Array Fault Detection and Classification Using Embedded Supervised Learning Methods. Hojabri, M.; Kellerhals, S.; Upadhyay, G.; Bowler, B. Energies 2022, 15, 2097.
https://doi.org/10.3390/en15062097
January 2022: Paper: Community-Based Microgrids: Literature Review and Pathways to Decarbonise the Local Electricity Network. Trivedi, R.; Patra, S.; Sidqi, Y.; Bowler, B.; Zimmermann, F.; Deconinck, G.; Papaemmanouil, A.; Khadem, S. Energies 2022, 15, 918.
https://doi.org/10.3390/en15030918
December 2021: Interview with Ben Bowler reported in Swissinfo: How AI could help Switzerland shift to renewables
December 2021: Article published in Bulletin: Mit der Digitalisierung dekarbonisieren
November 2021: Successful award of ERA-NET project ‘AISOP’: an AI-assisted decision support system for the electric distribution system operators
https://aisopproject.com/
November 2021: Successful award of ERA-NET project ‘GENTE’: a distributed governance toolbox for local energy communities including the internet of things , distributed ledger technology, edge processing and artificial intelligence
https://genteproject.com/
November 2021: Paper: Impact of local energy markets integration in power systems layer: A comprehensive review, Applied Energy, Volume 301, 2021, Viktorija Dudjak, Diana Neves, Tarek Alskaif, Shafi Khadem, Alejandro Pena-Bello, Pietro Saggese, Benjamin Bowler, Merlinda Andoni, Marina Bertolini, Yue Zhou, Blanche Lormeteau, Mustafa A. Mustafa, Yingjie Wang, Christina Francis, Fairouz Zobiri, David Parra, Antonios Papaemmanouil
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117434
October 2021: Delivered workshop at European Union Sustainable Energy Week entitled 'Micro generation for TSO and DSO grid services: potential value and routes to market'
October 2021: Successful pitch for Energy Lab funding for 'Insights Marketplace - Powering up your data for decarbonisation' alongside VIA Science SA
https://home.jointcreate.com/de_ch/ventures/56/
August 2021: Awarded funding for EVFlex project by Swiss Federal Office of Energy in response to their Future Mobility call, focusing on EV charge point aggregation and data privacy for grid service markets
August 2021: Awarded funding for Innocheck project entitled Secure Privacy-Enabling Platform for Dynamic Energy Tariffs and Smart Meters with VIA Science SA
https://www.solvewithvia.com/
July 2021: Awarded funding for Innosuisse project entitled eNet - an adaptable platform for advanced local energy markets with Virtual Global Trading, University of Geneva, and Services Industriels de Genève
https://vgt.energy/en/
May 2021: Awarded funding for Innocheck project entitled Data-driven fault prediction in distribution networks with Depsys SA
https://www.depsys.com/
April 2021: Delivered presentation at Advanced Machine Learning Days entitled ‘Federated Learning in Power Systems’
Watch again on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K1O_M8yL0I
February 2021: Delivered project report for European project 'PACE' entitled ‘Economic value of mCHP’s participating in power and grid service markets’
https://pace-energy.eu/
January 2021: Delivered project report for KnowlEDGE project entitled ‘Use cases and state-of-the-art analysis for advanced analytics at the grid edge using federated approaches to data’
September 2020: Awarded funding for Innosuisse project entitled ‘Intelligent SmartHelio Mesh’ with SmartHelio Sarl
https://smarthelio.com/
June 2020: Delivered project report for European project 'PACE' entitled ‘Economic value of mCHP’s participating in power and grid service markets (Germany)’
https://pace-energy.eu/
February 2020: Assumed lead role of Users TCP GoP2P Subtask 1 - Grid Integration of Peer to Peer Markets
https://userstcp.org/annex/peer-to-peer-energy-trading/
