Enercup

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  Sample of user interface

Inspiration

Everyday Ontarians are struggling with their electricity bills, and more conscious than ever of the environment. Meanwhile, gamification has quickly become the newest trend in sustainability engagement. Moreover, we realized that hydro bills often do not list how a given household performs relative to similar households, when this is relevant information to know to determine electricity usage.

What it does

Enercup is a proof of concept that allows individual houses in a neighbourhood or friend group to "compete" with one another for the Enercup title! Households can track usage over time in comparison to peers, see rankings and their change, and see past challenge results. Enercup tracks daily usage from households through electricity meter monitoring, and rewards top performers with energy rebates.

How we built it

Enercup's proof of concept was built through Figma, with plans to implement it through Android Studio and an electricity usage monitor.

Challenges we ran into

As our team members were not very familiar with Android Studio, it became a challenge to familiarize ourselves with the interface and features, even as three of our four members had extensive experience in Java. Pivoting to react.js for an initial proof of concept also proved challenging as most of our team did not have much experience with front end applications.

Additionally, ideating was half the battle, as it was difficult to reign in the free will given as hackers into actionable solutions that were feasible to do in a short period of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• learning react.js and becoming more familiar with it as a group
• attending our first in-person hackathon and having something!

What we learned

• Having a good understanding of tech stacks and good software principles is essential in understanding the range of solutions that can be solved within a hackathon
• At the same time, it is best to just plunge into something and get right to learning!

What's next for Enercup

• Further validating concept through users
• Transforming components into an app through Android Studio

Built With

• figma