Solario is a Rails app that helps you decide if it is economical or not to install photovoltaic panels on your roof. Solario is currently an alpha release and only shows the annual output of any solar (photovoltaic) panels in Australia via a 3-D graph using dummy data. At present, the intention is to release alpha code only. You can try it out here.
The goal of Solario is to inform you of the various financial costs and benefits of installing photovoltaic panels. Ultimately, an impartial cost-benefit analysis is to be generated by using Bureau of Meteorology data and algorithms to model the power output of solar panels anywhere in Australia. To ensure accurate models, these theoretical data will be validated against empirical data from existing photovoltaic arrays and the modelling algorithms adjusted accordingly.
This project has been broken up in to the following tentative stages:
- Show power output via 3D graph
- Calculate total annual power output
- Access empirical data from pvoutput.org
- Tweak BOM data to use in database
- Tweak accuracy of power output algorithm to match empirical data
- Calculate installation costs
- Calculate rebates and savings (based on electricity consumption patterns?)
- Calculate break-even point
- Release version 1
You will need Ruby 2.2.3, bundler and a recent version of Postgresql. Other dependencies are listed in the Gemfile. If you are not familiar with these, please read the Rails Getting Started Guide and PostgreSQL Installation Guide first.
After you have installed Ruby and PostgreSQL, you can install Solario:
cd to/whereever/you/want/to/install
git clone [email protected]:studiospring/solario.git
cd solario
gem install bundler
bundle install
Configure your database name and username in config/database.yml. Then run:
rake db:migrate
Please note that database seed data is not supplied. The Irradiances.direct field is a space delimited text field that takes 180 datapoints (e.g. "3.4 4.0 4.4 ...") to generate the 3D graph. Other fields are pretty self-explanatory.
Generate new hashes for secret variables in config/secrets.yml. You can use
bundle exec rake secret
to generate hashes.
Start up your local server:
bundle exec unicorn -p 3000
View site at http://localhost:3000. When you have everything set up, you will want to create an admin account at http://localhost:3000/users/sign_up and add some dummy data.
Rspec and Guard are used to test this app. To run the tests, after you have started rails, in your shell:
bundle exec guard
Solario has an admin section which is secured via the Devise gem.
Solario makes use of the following tech and IP, among many others:
- Ruby on Rails 4.1
- Graph3D
- jQuery
- PostgreSQL
- Heroku
- Bootstrap
- Glyphicons
- Sansation font family
This software is licensed under the AGPL. Copyright (c) 2015 Sean Loughman.