Awards & Nominations
Sol Mates has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
Radiant - Sunlight Tracker for Homeowners with Solar Panels
High-Level Project Summary
Radiant is a mobile application, developed using React Native and NASA's POWER API, that lets anyone with a phone and internet access see trends in the amount of sunlight that reaches their location. People with solar panels can compare these trends with patterns in the output of their panels to estimate their efficiency or notice signs of degradation. People can even use sunlight data to decide if buying panels makes sense for them, given how much solar energy their area receives.Radiant unlocks NASA data and presents it in a simplified form. No need to wrap your head around words like "irradiance"; just get an estimate of how much solar power reaches you over the past months, years even.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Radiant is a mobile application, developed using React Native and NASA's POWER API, that lets anyone with a phone and internet access see trends in the amount of sunlight that reaches their location. Using your current location, it grabs all-sky solar irradiance data from NASA POWER for a timeframe of your choosing (by default, the past year), averages the data monthly or weekly, and displays the result in a graph.
People with solar panels can compare these trends with patterns in the output of their panels to estimate their efficiency or notice signs of degradation. People can even use sunlight data to decide if buying panels makes sense for them, given how much solar energy their area receives.
Radiant unlocks NASA data and presents it in a simplified form. No need to wrap your head around words like "irradiance"; just get an estimate of how much solar power reaches you over the past months, years even.
My hope is that Radiant develops into an app that can be used by everyday people to evaluate their photovoltaic systems without being an expert, even enabling them to compare data points with a fine-toothed comb.
Radiant is developed using React Native, Expo, several libraries providing user interface components, Moment.js, and data from the NASA POWER Project.
Space Agency Data
Radiant requests POWER data for arbitrary locations and time ranges. In particular, it asks for daily estimates of the "All Sky Surface Shortwave Downward Irradiance" parameter in GeoJSON format for the Renewable Energy Community (i.e. the results are in kWhr/m^2/day). This data is used to provide the time-series graphs of irradiance seen in the app.
Hackathon Journey
This was one of my more successful hackathon experiences since I made a deliberate effort to rely more on existing tools and technologies. I've learned that using template projects as a starting point is very useful, and I should invest more in having templates I can use easily. I also learned a new word (irradiance).
I was inspired to choose this challenge because solar energy is a very important part of our energy future, and I've read a bit about perovskite solar cells. Plus, I once participated in a solar design competition.
References
- NASA POWER Project: https://power.larc.nasa.gov
- React Native: https://reactnative.dev
- Expo: expo.dev
- ReactNativeWeather (code I used as a starting point): https://github.com/JakeLin/ReactNativeWeather
- @react-native-picker/picker: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@react-native-picker/picker
- Moment.js: https://momentjs.com
- React: https://reactjs.org
- react-native-chart-kit: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-native-chart-kit
- react-native-paper-dates: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-native-paper-dates
The dependencies listed in the project code are more precise about code dependencies: https://github.com/jmanuel1/Radiant/blob/master/package.json.
Tags
#app, #solar, #power, #opendata, #crossplatform, #opensource
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.