High-Level Project Summary
We devised this app named “Sunefit” for people who are interested in climate change, SDGs, and energy saving. First, this app uses NASA POWER’s API to obtain data such as solar irradiance, UV irradiance, and humidity for your location. Then, it calculates and displays how much money you can save in your environment, using five methods. By being able to see specific figures, you can see exactly what energy-saving measures would be efficient in your area, and this will motivate you to take energy-saving measures. We also hope to promote the effective use of solar energy, which is being wasted, to help solve all kinds of environmental problems.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Problems
Energy from the sun, such as sunlight and solar heat, is enormous. In recent years, more and more people are interested in environmental issues, SDGS, and energy conservation.
However, the energy from the sun is still not being used effectively. And even those who are interested in environmental issues and energy conservation find it difficult to know how much they can save by what efforts.
Solutions
We have developed a dual-function app for people who are interested in environmental issues and the SDGs and who want to know how to save energy in a way that suits them.
The first function is to display a time series of solar data for any given location in an easy-to-understand graph on the app. The second function is to calculate how much you can save by what kind of energy-saving measures and display it on the app.
How it works
The first step for users of this app is to set their location information from the map displayed on the app screen. (First Page)
The Basical Info Page uses the NASA POWER API to obtain time series data of the sun corresponding to the set position information. After receiving the data, it displays a graph showing the time on the horizontal axis and the numerical values of each parameter on the vertical axis. The width of the time on the horizontal axis can be freely set by the user. (Basical Info Page)
The Solution Page displays the amount of money that can be saved and the amount of temperature that can be alleviated if solar panels, green curtains, solar air conditioning, sprinkling water, dry mist, and solar thermal air conditioning are used continuously for a certain period of time.
The amount of money that can be saved is calculated by parameters obtained from NASA POWER API and electricity rates that can be set by the user in User Profile Page.
The calculation formula is shown in the table below.
Users can enter their own room temperature on the Data Submit page. In the future, we will use the room temperature entered by the user as a basis for machine learning to improve the accuracy of the amount of money that can be saved.
Benefits
This app displays information about NASA POWER in a way that is useful and understandable to everyone. It also motivates users to save energy by showing the specific amount of money that can be saved through five different methods. Therefore, it is very beneficial for those who are interested in SDGs and climate change issues, and for those who want to save money by reducing power consumption.
What I want to achieve
This app encourages the effective use of solar energy and solar thermal energy, which are vast but wasted. We want to contribute to the solution of climate change and energy problems.
Tools and programming languages used
Design tool : Figma
Framework : Flutter
Programming language : Dart
NASA Powers API
Firebase
Amazon Machine Learning
Space Agency Data
To get the following parameters from the NASA Power API that are needed to find the amount of money that can be saved by the five ways of saving energy.
①All Sky (Clear Sky) Surface Shortwave Downward Irradiance
②Earth Skin Temperature
③Specific Humidity at 2 Meters
The larger ① is, the higher the power generation efficiency of solar panels.
② is the temperature of the land surface. The temperature of the solar panel affects the power generation efficiency of the solar panel. The temperature of the solar panels is determined from the average temperature of the ground surface.
③ is the humidity. The effect of sprinkling water will change depending on the humidity. Using the effect of sprinkling water obtained, the amount of money that can be saved can be obtained.
Hackathon Journey
Impressions of this hackathon
The experience of working on ideas and prototypes in a short period of time was very meaningful.
What I learned
In this project, we thought about how we can make effective use of solar energy. We did not have much knowledge about solar energy, so we were able. Since this hackathon was very short, we learned the importance of task management.
Why we chose this project
We had previously used Flutter to create a cross-platform smartphone app, so we chose a theme that would allow us to utilize that experience.
How we worked on the project
We first decided on the overall outline of the app and what this app was going to be about. In terms of the actual work, more resources were devoted to designing the UI with Figma than to the coding work. Since it was not practical to implement all the content we envisioned, we rather tried to create the minimum necessary to be effective in creating presentations and videos.
How we solved our setbacks and challenges.
We frequently shared what we were having trouble with. We prioritized which issues needed to be addressed as soon as possible and worked on them in order of priority.
References
Tags
#software, #smartphone, #application, #solarenergy
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.