Halton Village Project

Project Proposal Brief

12/01/14

Adam Musson (Role: Salesperson, Email: adammusson21@gmail.com)

Dharmendra Patel (Role: Analyst, Email: dharammp@gmail.com)

Joshua Prendergast (Role: Technologist, Email: j.prendo10@gmail.com)

Hafiyyullah Bhayat (Role: Planner, Email: bhayat@gmail.com)

Project supported by
Lancaster Cohousing (Website: www.lancastercohousing.org.uk)
Lancaster University (Website: www.lancs.ac.uk)
Project Summary

The ultimate goal of the project is to help a sustainable community to understand fully the energy being used within, thus
enabling them not only to reduce costs and the amount of energy being purchased back from the grid, but also making
use of ‘green’ energy. Members of the community cannot currently view how much energy their homes are using, this
being for each individual appliance, as well as the house as a whole.

Real-time energy data figures would allow comparisons to be made between locations and timings for levels of energy
usage. By adding QR codes/NFC tags to appliances, it would allow the users to scan these and understand what is being
used. This, coupled with a website holding the real-time energy data, would give the community the required information
in order to help them achieve their overall goal of becoming fully sustainable.

Challenge

The residents don't have clear information about the generation and consumption of electricity generated using the solar
panels. So, the challenge is to visualize the electricity generation and consumption information for them in a way which is
easily readable, accessible and understandable, because not everyone is used to technology.

Furthermore, challenges to be encountered include reading of information because there is no definitive way to read it
except physically reading it directly from the inverters.

The challenge has relevance with the overarching theme of sustainability. Since electricity information isn't available, the
residents, in winter, sometimes run out of electricity generated by solar panels. So, they have to buy electricity during
winter and export it during summer due to excess. The visualization will help them to use the electricity efficiently and
hence, support sustainability.

Since, the electricity is going to be used on devices, we have come up with a solution of integrating QR/NFC codes with
these devices. These codes could be scanned using phones and it would lead the user to a website which would display
the electricity statistics. This solution serves the purpose of the residents by allowing them to keep a track of the electricity
metrics.

It is important to tackle these challenges because it would make the lives of the residents easier. They would be able to
keep a track of the electricity readings, which would give them insight into the amount of electricity that is available, so
that it is utilized in an efficient way.

Proposed Solution

The primary function of the project, collecting real-time power

information, shall be realised through microcontrollers
attached to the power invertors. These will monitor the power
output and forward these as statistics for inclusion in the
server database.

The website will be hosted on a central server, which will act

as the focal point for every other component. PHP-enabled
pages will allow the generating of real-time power information.
The server will fulfil a second purpose of hosting the MySQL
database. A secondary aim of the project is to attach
interactive tags to common appliances. These tags will
redirect users to a special page detailing how much energy using the appliance would take. Thus, the tags will simply
contain a web link.
This project presents a unique challenge of combining several components to create a coherent solution. Creativity in
designing the custom microcontrollers will be of great importance. The server software must also facilitate the needs of
the entire system without failure. Therefore, innovation shall be vital in creating these two aspects, and further lateral
thinking is required for gathering appliance data and designing the website / database.

Plan

The timeframe that has been allocated (of approximately 10 weeks) is a relatively short time for a project of this nature;
however, the project has been planned very carefully with the contribution of all team members as well as the stakeholder
involved. Aspects taken into consideration whilst planning were: (i) fair allocation of work, (ii) meeting realistic milestones
throughout the proposed 10 weeks for this project, (iii) trialling and evaluating the prototype and lastly, (iv) setting aside
time for any contingencies. Furthermore, there will be constant communication between the group and the stakeholder
through regular visits to the village and using online methods such as ‘emailing’. However, the group faces potential risk of
slow communication with the stakeholder as there is not one point of contact. At the village, there is a variety of people
managing a range of tasks; the group will need to communicate with third party sources who manage the PV solar panels
and meters.

The Gantt chart below clearly shows the roles of group members; they come from different course backgrounds
(Computer Science, IT for Creative Industries and Natural Sciences) and have a variety of skills and expertise (this has
helped further motivate the group). Members have a chance to engage in tasks outside of their expertise to develop a
deeper understanding in both technical and non-technical work. Every member is confident that the group can produce a
working prototype within the allocated timeframe as all the resources required for project completion are available.

Figure 1: Gantt chart showing the proposed plan for completing the project within the allocated time-frame

Bibliography

Lancaster Cohousing (2013) Lancaster Cohousing [online] Available at: http://www.lancastercohousing.org.uk/ (Accessed
30 December 2013)

MORE (2013) Morecambe Bay Renewables [online] Available at: http://www.morerenewables.co.uk/ (Accessed 25
December 2013)