Trent Basin Digital Twin


Digital twin for a sustainable residential development in Nottingham

Delivered in January, 2018 by Ruggiero Guida

Product Management Internet of Things UI/UX Digital Twins

1 min READ

The Nottingham Trent Basin is a residential development with high aspirations. The architects in collaboration with the university designed it with two goals in mind. First, they wanted to show all the sustainability features of the development. Second, they wanted to study the behavior of the residents. To achieve the first goal they installed a 3.2 m x 1.8 m interactive touch-wall. The digital twin that IES developed was diplayed on this screen and residents and visitors were able to interact with it to get information about:

  • output of the solar panels installed on site;
  • current charge of the battery (at the time the largest Tesla battery installed in Europe);
  • various metrics about the site energy consumption and its comparison with the average in UK;
  • typical temperatures in the spaces.

Additionally, researchers under NDA had also access to anonymized data generated by hundreds of sensors installed in all the apartments and houses that allowed them to study typical usage patterns in homes.

The touch wall installed on site
The touch wall

The Trent Basin Digital Twin
The website


The project was also featured on the popular YouTube channel TheB1M with interviews to the main people involved in the project.

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