homee Energy Management 1.0
About the project
The homee energy manager is a part of the smart home App homee. It's goal is to visualize the PV production and the overall consumption of energy to give the home owner a tool to adjust their energy usage both manually and automatically.
In this project we developed the concept, UI Design and a clickdummy, that could be used for early feedback generating purposes during a fair.
Visualization as a driver of behavior change
Why is it important to visualize production & consumption data? To understand that you need to be aware that one of the challenges we are facing when it comes to the use of renewable energy is the match between the availability of energy and it's consumption. Renewable energy has natural peeks in it's availability. In the case of solar energy of course that is when the sun is shining. If the consumption of that energy is not taking place during that time, the energy must be transferred or stored. Which always results in some loss.
Therefor it is important to provide the home owner with this data and make it as easy as possible to get a feel for the available energy. Provided with this information he or she can adapt their behavior accordingly.
Getting smart
But in the case of homee it is not only about actively changing the behavior of the user. The app also provides them with the ability to automate the devices according to the energy peeks.