BTW 2025 Data Science Challenge: Forecasting Hourly Energy Prices
We invite you to participate in the Data Science Challenge at the upcoming BTW 2025, focusing on the task of forecasting hourly energy prices.
Overview: New Approach With Integrated Seminar
This year, we are enhancing the learning experience by integrating the challenge into a semester-long seminar for students and educators. Professors, research associates, and other teaching staff are encouraged to conduct a seminar on the challenge topic, allowing students to develop their submissions during the semester.
We will provide teaching material as a basis for this course to minimize organizational overhead and facilitate broad adoption. If you are interested in offering such a seminar, please send questions and comments to data-science@uni-oldenburg.de .
Open for All: Students, PhD Candidates, Independent Researchers
Submission is open to everybody. While we particularly encourage students enrolled in the integrated seminar to take part, the challenge is also open to other students who wish to independently tackle the problem. Additionally, non-university researchers and research groups are welcome to participate.
Task Description
Participants will predict hourly energy prices for a specific day, utilizing a variety of data sources and analytic techniques. The challenge is to create a comprehensive report in the form of a Jupyter Notebook, covering four thematic areas:
Domain Understanding & Data Sourcing: Build foundational knowledge of the energy market and identify relevant data sources.
Data Preparation & Exploratory Analysis: Cleanse data and conduct preliminary analyses to uncover patterns and insights.
Visualization & Storytelling: Develop visualizations to illustrate findings and narrate the data story effectively.
Predictive Modeling: Construct and evaluate predictive models, optimizing them for accuracy and usefulness.
Seminar and Submission Format
The challenge will be structured around a seminar phase, where participants will attend presentations and engage in discussions to deepen their understanding. This phase is crucial for developing a well-rounded submission. Each team will document their progress and insights in a Jupyter Notebook, divided into the specified thematic areas.
Key Dates
Material Publication: June 2024
Kickoff: October 2024 (Start of the Semester)
Seminar Phase: Weeks 4-6
Practicum Phase: Weeks 7-13
Final Seminar Presentation: End of January/Early February 2025
Submission Deadline for Data Science Challenge: Mid-February 2025
Updates on evaluation criteria, awards, and the conference program will be published at btw2025.gi.de/calls/data-science-challenge