I realize that by using electric cars, we are racing towards a cleaner future, but we are forcing that furutre onto power systems that are not built for it. The majority of neighborhood grids are about 50 years old. Imagine electricity as water passing through a pipe. The pipe overheats when every house simentaneoulsy plugs in a EV and turns on air conditions. In order to drive electric wihtout running the risk of blackouts and the activation of dirty peaker plants which hurt the environment through coal usage, I wanted to create a way for the neighborhood to work together and lower the pressure rather than widen the pipe which is more expensive
I used react to create Grid Pulse, which is a real time dashboard that dashboard which simulteas 50 home. Simplified, it is a calculation that measures the strain of the neighborhood transformer.
When the transformer stress reaches 80%, it automatically redirects electricicty away from the applianes and into the grid. It also takes electricity away from the EV by treating them like parked batteries thorugh Vehicle to Grid Technology simulation. To ensure real world application. The owners of the home have abilities to override any power exchanges, they authorize it, it prevents turned on appliances from being closed, and prevents AC from being turned off for too long.
The toughest challenge from me was managing UI. As somone who rarely ever touches front end, it was difficult to learn how to map all the components. I sought to AI, as a partner and a tool which helped me learn a lot more about UI and can help me in the future. This helps show the future of programiing. Where you have to use AI as an tool to learn instead of letting it dictate you.
This project showed me that it is better to improve what you have than to spend more. We need better technologies instead of dumping money into hardware. It also helped gain appreciation for peak shaving and reduving short bursts od demand to protect curutcal equipment.
Today the system works in real time, but we should move it to predict. We could integrate weather data so algorithm can anticipate heatwaves in advance and pre cool homes, and charge vehicles earlier in the day, to make sure that neighborhoods are prepared when a strike happens.
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