Meeting 2/22
- User 1
- 24-year-old college graduate
- Most of his experience is with desktop computers rather than mobile devices
- Shares apartment with roommate and splits bills; want to know how much he consumes vs. roommate
- Idea: break energy consumption into time periods, or even hours; this would satisfy his needs
- Not much domain knowledge of smart grid; never used a similar application
- Uses electricity for heating, computer, washing machine; has a gas stove
- Works as a software engineer; lots of technology experience
- Tasks:
- How much each appliance consumes
- Breakdown of energy usage by time
- Profile per person
- Price information; time range to help make decisions (shed)
- Sell back, using the same kind of information (time periods)
- Control appliances from outside of home
- Probably use application weekly, at most, although he brings his phone with him
- If he could control appliances from phone, he would use the application daily
- What can go wrong?
- Security and privacy: who would be able to access information about which appliances are on? Could they extrapolate information, e.g. whether someone is at home?
- Would we be able to give an accurate bill? Probably not: could give a rough estimate of savings, but the trend information would be useful
- Could let users enter the actual data from their own bill or e-bill; track it in the application
- Research/background reading
- List of tasks for the app
- Monitor consumption
- Buy and sell power
- Notifications from power company; give option to turn off appliances
- In future, real-time marketing information about prices; could give notifications to the user about how much reserve is available and the current pricing
- At peak hours, may send information about price--configure notifications to be sent when over a certain number of kWh, to help decide when to schedule energy hogs
- Should also be able to choose what time they receive the information
- To do: download SDK and look at tutorials. Limit scope of project at first, to allow time to learn to use SDK. Use Android 2.3.4
- May want to look at existing apps from utility companies (National Grid?) that allow users to view their usage
- Working project title: Smart Grid