23 July 2012

- The implementation for Team Module is started. Now, users can join to an energy team, and follow the live data which shows the total energy consumption of the team. The search functionality is added to team list page.

- Following articles are examined:

http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/4748/?sequence=2

http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/FINAL-energy-aware-dwelling.pdf

- Possible calendar API's are investigated:

   Google Calendar, wdCalendar, django-swingtime, django-schedule

- Interfaces v.2:

Booking Activity

Activity Type: Shower, Washing, etc.

Activity Hours: 01:05, 02:15, 12:30, etc.

Availability: This field will be automatically updated with respect to selected date and hours.

If the time is not intense, it will be green. While medium-dense is yellow, red color will represent high density.

By doing so, user interface will be kept very simple. User will be able to select any time they want even if the time has high density (red). Hence, user comfort will not be affected since user can give the decision by himself while being informed about the density. However, we can make some suggestions when user tries to book the time which has high density (red). Suggestions can be the closest time to the selected one on the same day or with the same time on different days (the day before or after).

My Team

Instead of displaying each member's energy consumption, it is possible to display team performances in my team page. This will result in efficiency in number of pages and provide privacy. In the figure above, all teams are listed, the highlighted one is the team which the user belongs to. The alternative listing method can be as following figure below in which only two teams are listed in addition to the user's team, the order will be determined with respect to their scores.

Some jquery time pickers:

16 July 2012

Eclipse is installed, and required software are added (subclipse). New branch for the extension is created in the repository. 

A new django application is created to represent Team Module. Currently, users are enabled to create and list energy teams. 

In the meeting, energy activity booking module is discussed, and the scope of the project is clarified.

The outputs of the meeting:

- Booking Module will help individual team members to plan their activities such as taking shower. The suggestion will take account of other members' booked activities. By doing so, the energy consumption of a team could be flattenned.

- Team Module will represent the performance of teams on flattening their energy consumption.

The module will also display live energy consumption data of each team through showing each individual member's live data.

The sketches of the modules:

9 July 2012

I started to write literature review, and to look at some related works like MyEnergy.

Literature review includes the following topics: electricity market, smart grid, smart meters, peak demand problem, demand side management, agents in energy domain, human-computer interaction techniques for energy domain and the influence of society on individuals' behavior.

Resources: 

- ... (will be updated soon)

FigureEnergy is set up in local.

2 July 2012

A simple django application is developed through django tutorial. The tutorial is just composed of 3 parts, and gives you the sense of how the model, controller and template structures of django work.

- https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/intro/tutorial01/

More detailed django documentation is scanned. It is beneficial to know where to look at later stages when you need some specific functionality.

- https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/topics/

I found the following django example more useful to understand how to perform CRUD functions without admin site, and how to utilize AJAX in django.

- http://dev.lethain.com/intro-to-unintrusive-javascript-with-django/

I read some documents related to energy domain.

- The Economics of Renewable Energy, 2008, House of Lords, UK
   http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/195/195i.pdf
- The Path of the Smart Grid, 2010, Hassan Farhangi.
   http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5357331&tag=1
- Smart Grid- How Do We Get There?, 2008, Joe Miller.
   http://www.netl.doe.gov/smartgrid/refshelf.html#Articles

25 June 2012

ElectricFriends and FigureEnergy are analyzed in terms of database design, code structure and technology.

- FigureEnergy: http://hci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/wiki/FigureEnergy
- ElectricFriends: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8429316/ElectricFriends.pdf

The articles below are examined. The first article is useful to understand the peak demand problem and solution of the problem through micro-storages. Second one is about how predicting consumer's activities can help them to reduce their energy consumption.

- http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268360/

- http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/339215/

The installations of python, django, pip and virtualenv are completed. I am using WampServer for MySql. MySql is useful for your initial projects to figure out how django works. FigureEnergy uses Sqlite. Pip is useful to get required libraries for FigureEnergy.

- http://www.wampserver.com/en/

- http://slacy.com/blog/2011/06/django-postgresql-virtualenv-development-setup-for-windows-7/

- http://blog.troygrosfield.com/2010/12/18/installing-easy_install-and-pip-for-python/

- http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html

18 June 2012

 First meeting has been held.

- The goal of research project is determined. FigureEnergy, interactive web-based application providing feedback to electricity consumers, will be extended to enable its users to form teams, and to collaborate for flattening peak electricty demand.

- In order to perform development activities following technologies used in FigureEnergy are required to learn: Pyhon, Django, JavaScript.

FirstPython and JavaScript tutorials are examined to grasp the ready code in FigureEnergy.

- Python : http://docs.python.org/tutorial/

- JavaScript : http://yuiblog.com/crockford/

I found some documents to understand energy domain.

- Electricity Market Reform White Paper 2011 - Deparment of Energy and Climate Change, UK.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/legislation/white_papers/emr_wp_2011/emr_wp_2011.aspx

- An Introduction to Australia's National Electricity Market - AEMO, AU.

  http://www.aemo.com.au/~/media/Files/Other/corporate/0000-0262%20pdf.pdf

- Electricity Statistics - Deparment of Energy and Climate Change, UK.

  http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/energy_stats/source/electricity/electricity.aspx

- The electric power grid and challenges it faces, U.S. Energy Information Administration.

  http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/power_grid.cfm