Inspiration
One of the main contributors to climate change is the carbon emissions released from burning fossil fuels to power our lives. In light of this, we wanted to create an interactive and fun tool that allows people to see the difference between energy sources and experiment with changing various numbers, allowing them to see the impact these changes have on the final result. We also wanted to display the final result in a simple and visual way, so that any average user with no background knowledge could still see and understand the difference clearly.
What it does
Once you press "Get started" or scroll down, you will see our energy sources calculator. There, pick any energy source and enter your custom values to see how much that will cost, how much energy it generates, and the carbon emissions if applicable. We will also compare the cost, output and emissions to many real-world examples.
How we built it
We started with the broad concept of building an easy-to-use web application to display some information about climate change, and eventually refined it down to this idea. We built this web page mainly on HTML and CSS, using javascript to add interactivity. We researched various sources on the internet to get an accurate yet simple calculation for cost, energy production and carbon emissions of various energy resources.
Challenges we ran into
During the process of creating this, we ran into various issues involving the time constraints and lack of experience. In our 3-person team, only one of us had experience with HTML/CSS/JS and the rest of us only had experience in python. We could not come up with any full project that could make good use of our skills, so we struggled with having to learn things on the spot. We tried to include a complex genetic algorithm to find an optimal energy resource given certain parameters using the DCP framework, but that could not be implemented due to time constraints.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
This was the first time any of us made a responsive design for a website, and it turned out really well. We also created a very visually appealing front-end, probably the best any of us have ever made in the past. Additionally, since two of us have very little experience with web-development, and this is the first hackathon any of us have participated in, we’re proud that we actually came up with an idea and created something with it.
What we learned
At the beginning, we were experimenting with the DCP framework and learned how it functioned, and how to use it. When creating the front-end, we learned how to create responsive web design, and how to use cards in html. Additionally, since it was the first time two of us worked with HTML/CSS/JS, we learned many things about the basics of creating a website using these tools when developing a prototype for the front-end. With the research needed to create the calculations, we learned a great deal about how different energy sources function, and learned the basics of how to calculate their energy production. Finally, as it was the first hackathon for all of us, we learned how to manage time to create a project in a short amount of time. In the future, we will definitely be more efficient with our time and try to create something even better!
What's next for Cleanergy
In the future, we would like to further develop and implement the genetic algorithm where we calculate the optimal energy resources for a set of parameters. We believe that it would make our web application much more interactive and interesting for people. Furthermore, we want to add more visual aspects to the information that is returned. This will help users better understand the data, and will also be more visually appealing. Of course, we also need to fine tune the calculations that we use so that the results can be more precise. Since we used very simplified versions of the energy calculations, the results may not always be completely accurate.
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