High-Level Project Summary
We have developed an app that will let anybody, from anywhere (initially only from Paraguay), based on their monthly electrical energy consumption and an initial amount of solar panels, to know how much is going to be their initial investment, how much energy are they going to generate and in how long they are going to need to start working at zero-loss. It solves the challenge by allowing anybody to seize the benefits from space exploration, through the use of solar direct radiation, obtained from satellites. It is important because this app will definitely allow renewable energy enthusiasts to remarkably improve their access to relevant data.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The app is developed for anybody to use, you need to put your electrical energy consumption (available at your electrical bill), the number of solar panels you initially think you will need, and your country. Then, the app will know your exact location; based on that you will have a lot of data. The app provides you with the avg. yearly consumption of electricity and money spent on it (Data may change depending on local electricity fees) and the amount of energy you will spend in a year, then an exact data of the electricity you will produce monthly and by year with solar panels (depending on the quantity you hope to install) and finally will provide you and outcome of how many panels it is recommended for you and the time needed for the panels to become profitable and to zero-cost every month. The app works with a database and web scrapping on the web page of NASA detecting your coordinates and proceeding to give you the exact amount of solar power produced in the area, that data then goes through a series of calculations in order to become the final data showed in the app. The information we used were: market research of the solar panels, electrical energy fees, conversion factors. We need to highlight that each data may vary depending on the location. We decide to make Paraguay a start point since it is our homeland it will be very easy for us to start there and expand to the whole world since the app is server-based just need to add all locations in the original code. The benefits can be seen since the first time you open the app, is easy is clean, and is so intuitive that since you open it you only have to input a few numbers and the app will do everything for you. So, you need to know if solar panels are reliable for you and your family? This is the app that you will need and you will love it. Our final goal as a team, as students and as software developers, is to make this kind of information not just solar energy, all kinds of information to everyone, to make it easy to access and make it reliable to provide, our goal is not just centered in our country is centered in the existent people around the world, solar energy is such a technology that looks like magic, and can be implemented in so so many places around the globe, from our homeland in Paraguay to even China, Australia and all the remotes islands of the Pacific where this idea would be very helpful to their development, that's our ulterior goal. Starting from little and become bigger as the Universe lets us. Finally, we would like to explain something about the development of the project how this was possible and how this would become a larger system in years, we use well-known tools and software since we know this is project will become bigger in the future as we will achieve the goals we decided to develop all of this in Java and Swift programming language for Android and iOS obviously with all the data well processed and tested before public use.
Space Agency Data
We have decided to use the POWER project, from NASA. We set some necessary filters in order to get the direct solar radiation. After we set the monthly or yearly solar radiation, we went region by region in order to get at least five measurements in each region to get our average solar radiation.
Hackathon Journey
This experience can be described as a mind-changing experience since the first day we joined NASA Space Apps. Our main goal is to help people, to serve people, and make them more familiar with data that they would have never thought to have access to before, like solar energy provided in your own living place, We said mind-changing since this experience helped us to understand and learn how renewable energy sources are the future and by creating Helios App, we hope it will be very popular around the globe, for solar energy is not just the future it is our present and it isn't a science fiction technology, it is an outstanding and a very smart way to produce energy, the energy that will provide your children and even you, all the power you will need, This could be done thanks to teamwork, this was a long way full of concerns, problems, and stages that we didn't prepare for, but with the hope to help and develop new ways of information we could pass through all of this simply by thinking about what people need? Who you would like to have the information? and whether a 10-year old kid would understand the future of energy?. Finally, we would like to thank NASA, for all the resources that gave us and not just NASA, all the space agencies involved in such a beautiful and coalescing project for all mankind, as well to our space agency, Paraguayan Space Agency for all the coaches and team members for the goals achieved until this day this wouldn't be possible without you and without all people present here. And finally, we would like to finish this with the phrase: "Humans can reach whatever they want, so we can give you the sun on your hands. The future is the hope of the present."
References
https://power.larc.nasa.gov/data-access-viewer/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MNvr9RD4IjcW9Qx_I2xtXZtRM-7KRnv9/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=105794276713018287877&rtpof=true&sd=true
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qKA1ShesKlvVtfAKyqqc99KQ4U7DOYyd/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=105794276713018287877&rtpof=true&sd=true
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L6Ikg-00vQqs3bBt4GR3pJ4hA4kHIk0C/view?usp=sharing
Tags
#app #solarenergy
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.