Energypedia - History

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2007	Exploration of Web 2.0 Applications Energypedia was developed by Robert Heine within the Dutch-German Energy Partnership "Energising Development" (EnDev) implemented by GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH). It all started end of 2007 when EnDev first tested wikis for internal communication and organization purposes.
2008	Development of the EnDev Wiki After initial positive experiences using the wiki, a concept was developed by EnDev describing the benefits of using wikis for knowledge and project management. As a result a first version of the prospective EnDev Wiki was developed.
2009	Energypedia is Born In January 2009, EnDev finally launched the internal EnDev Wiki. The number of users increased rapidly as more GIZ staff requested accounts. With the wealth of information developed in the wiki, EnDev decided to open up the wiki to non-EnDev users at the end of 2009. This development led to the idea of launching a general wiki on renewable energy and energy efficiency. The idea of "energypedia" was born.
2010	Award-winning EnDev Wiki becomes www.energypedia.info In May 2010, the EnDev Wiki received the GTZ (now GIZ) quality award. Shortly afterwards energypedia was officially launched as an independent platform on June 8th 2010! However, interested experts still had to register to be able to read and write. Since then, energy experts, academics and other interested stakeholders all over the world are invited to use it for knowledge exchange and collaboration on renewable energy and energy access issues in developing countries.
2011	Energypedia Opens to the Public Energypedia's development speeded up quickly in 2011. In April, the first easy-to-use wiki database was installed. The PicoPV Database encompasses a unique collection of more than 90 small photovoltaic systems. Other databases followed like the Total Energy Wiki, a new online grassroots data collection system about energy access, which was developed in cooperation with GIZ and Practical Action. In spring 2011 energypedia.info was opened to the general public. In September 2011, energypedia became accessible to all web users without prior registration. This was a major step to an open and free knowledge-exchange on the platform. In this year, energypedia also experienced a tremendous increase in registered energy experts, even though registration was not obligatory for reading rights anymore.
2012	Energypedia becomes an Independent Nonprofit Organization The year 2012 was characterized by huge organizational changes. In July 2011, “energypedia UG (haftungsbeschränkt)” was officially founded as a German non-profit company. However, only in 2012 did this newly created body take over the responsibility for www.energypedia.info. Energypedia has been in charge of its operation and continuous development since March 2012. A month later, the energypedia team started working in their new offices.