Just For Fun

Lima | You Are My Sunshine

INTI Light

High-Level Project Summary

An application was developed to be able to massify the use of solar panels as a means of obtaining energy that is friendly to the environment. This app will help people to make an informed decision about whether or not to continue using non-renewable energy or to switch to solar. The App will be able to assist people to adopt a photovoltaic system in their homes. the App will ask for some information such as location, type of roof, data of the electricity bill, etc. The app will make a request to NASA POWER, to get the irradiance at every location. With the results obtained, people will be able to know the number of solar panels that can be placed and also the KWh that they can obtain.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://www.canva.com/design/DAEr0Fm8-ZQ/jKhOGTQWUACoDvrXc-aT3w/view?utm_content=DAEr0Fm8-ZQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=recording_view

Link to Final Project

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=host.exp.exponent&hl=es_PE&gl=US

Detailed Project Description

This Project will help many regular people to have the chance to switch from non-renewable energy to renewable energy. The App can be used by anyone.

The App INTI Light has been built in Expo Project which allows us to create apps for Android and iOS devices. Expo uses JavaScript and React Native.

At the beginning, the user identifies their home on a map and we store the coordinates, then we ask the user to introduce the KWh consumed in the month, the type of their home’s roof, the cardinal position of the house(whether it faces to the north, south, west or east), the area and/or slope of the roof.

Using the coordinates, we can make a request to NASA POWER, to get the irradiance at every location. This, combined with the area of the roof gives us the number of solar panels and the amount of energy we can have with solar power. Additionally, we could make a comparison with the current consumption of KWh to know whether or not it is a good option to switch energy sources.

Some interesting options our app could have in the future is the prediction for irradiance and other factors such as cloud’s presence using AI algorithms such as Recurrent Neural Networks or Autoencoders and the historical information from NASA POWER, to know how effective and economically worth is just for them to use solar energy.

Space Agency Data

Our project is using relevant data extracted from NASA Power Data Access Viewer. Specifically, the All-Sky Surface Longwave Downward Irradiance, the Average Sun hours. This is allowing us to get the Kilowatt-hour per square meter per day in any given location on earth. We are basing our calculations for residential or commercial photovoltaic systems on this data.

Seeing the amount of energy produced by the sun and seeing such high irradiance in many locations of the world, especially in our homeland Peru, inspire us to contribute to the expansion of solar energy as an alternative source of renewable energy.

NASA Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources

https://power.larc.nasa.gov/

Hackathon Journey

This experience in the Space Apps has been one of the most challenging ones because of the short time to find a solution.

In this challenge, we have learned that teamwork helps us to divide the responsibilities and make them lighter. Furthermore, we have learned about each other because we are from different careers. For instance, how to design a sketch for the development of android applications, how to exchange data between applications, and investigate the medium in which the technology will be applied.

Our team has chosen this challenge because there is a need for renewable energy that is friendly to the environment.

The approach in developing this project was to find a friendly and useful interface to be able to massify the use of solar panels as a means of obtaining energy as a result regular people can use less pollutant energy and save the Earth.

Due to the short time we had, research was first done on applications related to the subject, then meetings were held at a time when we were all available. In the meetings, we gave brainstorm ideas and then solve them and focus on the challenge. These meetings helped us with assigning tasks and making decisions.

We are grateful to the organizers of the hackathon for challenging us to come up with ideas that can improve the lives of all who share our largest house called Earth.