Adelaide (SunCheck)

Inspiration

20 percent of solar panels in Australia are not working. For most of the market, there's no easy way to know whether your system is working. For the one percent of consumers where electronic performer monitoring is in place, forecasts are often inaccurate, or data is incomplete.

What it does

Sun Check compares the performance of your PV system with solar radiance data from the Bureau of Meteorology. You'll get a report every 30 or 90 days with a report on your system performance, with a traffic light alert to let you know how well your

How I built it

The website is built on the rapid application development platform, Rappsio, developed by one of our team members. The backend software uses the Enphase API to retreive usage data from solar systems data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for solar radiation data. The frontend website uses charting tools provided by Highcharts.

Challenges I ran into

Accessing data! We had sites going offline, data we thought was a live feed turned out to be historical only, but we ended up with a better data source in the end.

The calculations to establish meaningful comparisons between solar system generation data and solar radiation data is a challenge and will also require some real world testing.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Our partnerships - we're in early stage negotiations for partnerships with Enphase, one of the world's leading providers of PV systems, and Solar Quotes, who have 250,000 customers around Australia. Our concept has also been endorsed by Energy Networks Australia, the national peak body for electricity transmission and distribution.

We're proudest of our team - with diverse backgrounds (we only met last week), we've pulled together and achieved a great deal in a short amount of time, despite the inevitable obstacles that a hackathon throws in your way.

What I learned

The value of taking the time to ensure the he whole team is on the same page.

That there is an incredible depth of knowledge amongst the CSIRO team - we couldn't have pulled this off without the advice of CSIRO staff and our mentors.

What's next for Adelaide (SunCheck)

We've already got multiple future releases in the mix, including expanding our Australian offering, and launching into the US market with a focus on financiers. We're also already getting requests from installers for new features for future releases

Built With

• bootstrap
• javascript
• rappsio