Smart Islands Energy Project
An animated, interactive web timeline that brings together the story and assets of Hitachi's renewable energy project on the Isles of Scilly, helping the community make better use of clean energy.
| Client | Hitachi |
|---|---|
| UN SDGs | 07 Affordable And Clean Energy 09 Industry, Innovation And Infrastructure 13 Climate Action 17 Partnerships For The Goals |
| Impact | United Kingdom |
| Technologies | API |
01 Introduction
Hitachi is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and a recognised climate change innovator that helps governments, cities, and companies cut carbon.
Hitachi was running the Smart Islands Energy project on the Isles of Scilly, with the aim of moving the islands to 40 percent renewable energy by 2025 and cutting energy costs by 40 percent. The work involved tracking and managing energy supply, storage, and demand across the islands, and the wider goal was to help the community make better use of the renewable energy in the network.
With partial funding from the European Regional Development Fund, Hitachi approached us to build an animated web timeline that would tell the project's story and pull its assets together in one place.
02 The Project
We built an interactive, animated timeline — a single web page that acts as both a resource library and an evolving record of the project. It needed to work for several different audiences at once: project stakeholders, potential investors, people interested in smart energy, and the islanders themselves. It also had to be easy to embed into third-party websites and web applications.
We took a phased approach so the timeline could grow alongside the project itself. It was built to hold many different kinds of content: data-driven charts and graphs, illustrations and infographics, third-party material (supplier and stakeholder statements, progress reports, blogs, articles), video (talking heads, presentations, vlogs), and PDF documents (white papers, studies, research, plans).
The work began with a workshop between our team and Hitachi's in Maidenhead, bringing together the creative and technical leads from both sides to agree objectives and map out the phased plan. From there we ran the project on an agile basis, using Jira to keep plans shared and progress visible, with regular reviews against deadlines.
Our designers worked closely with Hitachi to match their branding, visual identity, and narrative. On the technical side, we used GSAP/GreenSock for the animations and transitions, alongside PHP and jQuery. This kept the timeline loading quickly and smoothly despite the large amount of visual content, and made it straightforward to update as the project moved forward.
03 Conclusion
The finished timeline gave Hitachi a clear, visually engaging way to show the Smart Islands Energy project's progress and assets, and it served all of its audiences well - from project participants and investors to the local community. Its quick loading, easy updating, and strong usability made for a smooth experience throughout.
The project reinforced a few lessons: a phased approach was essential for managing complexity while still delivering immediate value, and clear communication, regular reviews, and well-defined goals kept everything on track. The result was a flexible, content-rich timeline that communicated effectively with stakeholders and engaged its audience - a strong example of both teams delivering for a renewable energy initiative.