BuildingEnergy

A working calculator on AngularJS, Elasticsearch, a geocoder and Django REST Framework. After it the client kept us on for new front-end design and features, back-end work and the site's administration.

Business context

What the client needed

For BuildingEnergy, a renewable energy producer, we built a tool that finds a building by its address, takes its electricity and gas meter reads and shows its energy use over time, next to similar buildings and as a forecast, with projects and notes kept for each building.

To plan efficiency and solar projects, an energy company needs to know how a building uses energy now and where that is heading. BuildingEnergy needed a calculator that turns a building's meter reads into that picture, starting from nothing more than its address.

User stories

What people do with it

• As an energy analyst, I want to find a building by its address and see its meter reads on one chart, so that I understand its energy use in minutes.
• As an analyst, I want the building shown next to similar ones, so that I know whether its use is high or low.
• As a project manager, I want efficiency and solar projects kept with the building, so that the plan and the data live together.

Key challenges

What made it hard

• 01
  From an address to a building. A geocoder places the building, and Elasticsearch finds it again by any part of its address, its name or a meter.
• 02
  Units that do not add up by themselves. Electricity in kW and kWh and gas in therms and ccf, read on different dates, share one timeline.
• 03
  A forecast you can read. The chart carries the reads up to the last one and a forecast band after it, with the same data in a table.

Results

What we delivered

Technology