HEEP Update - Milestone 1

Today is the first milestone of our HEEP project. I think significant progress has been made as far as creative thinking and design has been concerned. It's like a paradigm shift from constructing from specifications to designing a project for the client. They have basically handed us the reigns to pursue what we think is best. I hope it ends that way as well.

Our plan is now to come up with as many ideas as we can think of, outside the box. We are no longer focusing solely on visualizations. We want to create applications that reflect what the user of the site would want, not necessarily what the organization would like for itself. For example, a report card for the organization is not really at the best interests of the organization, rather, a report card for products that it gives rebates on would be a wiser choice since the consumer will find that information much more useful.

Currently we have thought of a few calculators that will serve as applications in the tabs. These are being implemented in plain javascript with the use of google visualization api to fetch data from the spreadsheets into our function that does the calculations. The result is displayed for the user in an easy to interpret interface.

The Appliance Report Card

• Get top 5 Energy Star Efficient Models
• Get Cheapest Non-Energy Star Models
• All models must have similar specs
• Compare/Determine How Long Until Break Even
• Less Amount of Time is Better
• Grade Based on Time for Break Even

The Appliance Calculator

• User enters info in for 2 models
• Calculate Break Even Point
• Total Savings and amount of time (lifetime estimate)

The Cooling Degree Day Calculator

• User enters two years, their corresponding
  power usages, and a base temperature
  
• Calculates total change in power usage per cooling degree day and percent of change

The Cooling Degree vs Oahu Generation

• Power generation for two years are read
• Cooling Degree Data is read for corresponding years
• Calculates the amount of power generated per Cooling Degree Day and percent change

We expect to have 2 of these calculators available for demo in two days.

We also plan on giving HEEP a live demonstration so they can give feed back in 2 weeks.