A web tool that can be used to determine the size of a battery needed to store solar energy for a residential application.
During the day solar cells are producing more energy than ever before, but peak demand for electricity is in the evening time when solar cells are not producing. In order to meet peak demand, utility companies resort to producing energy from traditional sources. To combat this, a battery sizing tool will be build so that residential solar installations can college energy during the day for use at night to offset the need for utility companies to need produce. This problem is commonly referred to as the duck curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
Using location and solar installation details from a user we can predict the energy production of their installation using the NREL PVWatts API. We can then take these production results to size a battery that can store the complete production of solar energy. Additionally, the OpenEI electrical utilities API can be used to collect information about utility rates based on a users location and monetary estimations can be provided. Some regions have electricity rate structures, where the electricity rates are different throughout the day.
This app is intended for solar installation professionals and consumers considering a solar installation.
- Which APIs will you use? NREL Solar (PVWatts) & OpenEI (utility rates)
- Which OAuth integration are you planning to use? Google and/or Facebook (I wasn’t really planning on saving user info, wanted to build it as a simple too similar to http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ )