Inspiration
As utilities implement more and more renewables onto the grid, a problem arises called the duck curve. Solar penetration is so high during the day that renewables have to be curtailed and then in the evenings, costly and carbon intense peaker plants must be turned on to meet homeowners demand. This demand characteristic looks like the back of a duck when graphed. We want to empower homeowners to use the cleanest and cheapest electricity while helping utilities shift demand from the evening to the afternoon. By using electricity when it is available, we can forgo investing in battery storage and stop using natural gas peaker plants. We want the Appliance Buddy to empower homeowners to use electricity when it is cheap and green, and help utilities solve the duck curve conundrum.
What it does
As homes get smarter, why shouldn’t they get greener as well? The Appliance Buddy is a wifi connected smart switch which turns on an appliance when the carbon emitted by California’s electrical grid is below 5100 metric tons of CO2 per hour.
How we built it
We flashed custom firmware onto a wifi connected smart switch, called a Sonoff. With the custom firmware we could control the Sonoff through a Http address. We then built an algorithm which reads a csv file and sends a signal to the Sonoff to turn on or off the lamp. We ran the program on a RasberryPi to send Off and On signals to the http address based on our algorithm.
Challenges we ran into
We had difficulty soldering to the Sonoff to be able to flash the the custom software onto the Sonoff. Once we flashed the firmware we had trouble getting it to run on the campus wifi. In order to bypass this problem we used a hotspot from our phone. We also had difficulty reading a csv into python and sending signals to the Sonoff’s IP address. We powered through and got everything to work!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we created a device which uses the grids carbon emission data to turn on and off an appliance.
What we learned
We had to relearn Python, how to saughter, and how to put software onto a Sonoff. Our group had to troubleshoot problems and think critically to make the Appliance Buddy work.
What's next for Appliance Buddy
We want to optimize and find solutions to better integrate the Appliance Buddy into home automation. This IoT solution could schedule loads and communicate with the grid operator to aggregate demand from homes and car charging with minimal input from homeowners. By shifting demand to times when renewable energy penetration is high we can save customers and utilities money, while reducing carbon emissions.
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