This week I have been busy making the skeleton of my Green Button app. The idea is that a user can enter in their Green Button data which contains their 15 minute energy usage profile along with their address, heating source, and desired solar panel specs to see how much they could be saving by switching to solar. Once the user submits their Green Button data NRELs PVWatts application calculates the predicted energy produced onsite using the address and this is subtracted from the energy logged in the Green Button data. Depending on the utility provider of the user’s energy savings is estimated based on the tariff structure of that utility.

I created the framework in Django along with the file submission and reading functionality. The front-end is a chart using the Highcharts API. I threw in some mock data to make sure that the charts were working and I also have the file submission working properly now. The majority of the work left is to create forms to enter a user’s address and heating source. There is more work needed on the calculations and PVWatts integration. In the past I have worked on projects like creating video games where I started with code (back-end) and delayed the animations and visuals (front-end) until later. I now know better and am working on both the front-end and back-end simultaneously as they often have to conform with one another, rather than one of these concepts being an afterthought.