Solar Panel

Solar Management system is one of the user interface which is mainly designed for the middle-income home owners. This marketing strategy is the cost benefit and it has several benefits for the environment. This system also monitors the solar power system in the roof top, along with its charging and storage state. The existing user interface is very complex and it confuses the users. Hence, the new interface will be designed for the effective use of the system. Pencil tool will be used to design the system. A detailed design will be given for the solar management system. Based on the given requirement, two alternative designs will be given for the system.

The user can register their details. After logging into their account, the home page of the Solar Home Management System will be displayed. In Home page, there are three panels such as Solar Panel, Battery Panel and Grid Panel. If the users have any queries regarding the solar management, they can ask to the help desk quickly through various options like email, Facebook and twitter accounts.

The user can view the details of the power energy consumption produced and stored in the solar panel, either on daily basis or on monthly basis. The power is calculated as KW per Hour. If the user needs to reset the count, there will be an option to delete the previous statistics and reset the storage settings. When clicking the “Solar Panel” button, the other unnecessary details will be hidden and the user required information is only displayed.

In the “Battery Panel”, the information about the total amount of energy consumed from the solar panel and how much amount of energy stored will be displayed. As it is provided with the Battery statistics and progress bar, it is very easy to understand the remaining charge of the battery. So, the user can be alerted to activate the solar panel and produce the energy.

When clicking the “Grid Panel” button, the user can view the details of “Grid Costs”. It displays the total running cost, peak time, cost of peak time, off-peak time and cost of peak time. The total amount of energy consumed by the grid will be displayed. Based on the energy consumption of grid, the costs can be calculated.

In this interface, all the contents are provided in one page. As it does not have any hyperlinks, it is easy to access the three panels. When the user accesses one panel, the other panels and sections will be invisible. So that, the required information is only visible and is easy to focus by the user. Because, redirecting from one page to another page will complicate the process. Thus, the hyperlinks are avoided in the first interface design concept.

Battery Panel

The above screenshot displays the second design of the solar home management system. The solar home management contains three panels, where it has solar, battery and grid. It has the daily and monthly consumption buttons in the solar system. This design provides many drawbacks and disadvantages. The main demerits of this design is that, it contains more number of links, between one page to another page. The home page has no privacy or security settings. This design should not include the contact information about the solar management system. As, there are chances that the users can get confused by knowing the details about the solar management system.

The above screenshot displays the power consumed, power produced, power stored, and power exported ranges and levels. But, it does not mention which panel is selected. Thus, the page is difficult to understand for the user and also it takes some time to understand.

The above screenshot displays the daily and monthly consumption of the battery statistics. This page provides the information only about the battery panel. It does not contain the accessibility option or any navigation option of the battery panel. The battery panel provides the power consumed and power stored levels.

The above page displays the information about the grid and grid costs. The main drawback of the design includes having more number of separate pages and information. The design could not use effective accessibility functions and various colors of buttons and backgrounds. This page does not have enable or disable option, while displaying the information.

The smart home energy management system provides an intelligent energy management by measuring all the energy flows in the home solar panel. It is an online portal that provides the details for the solar power professionals and has most useful information for the system owners. The system owners can manage the information such as total amount of power produced, consumed, stored and exported by the solar system in their home. The main objective of this system is to design a smart solar home management system that makes the usage of solar energy in our home in an optimized method. Also to reduce the cost of electricity. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to design the interface with efficient usability.

When compared to the second interface design, the first Interface design concept provides effective usability. The reasons are provided below:

• The functionalities presented in a single page are very clear. The user won’t get confused.
• The interface provides security for the user’s information.
• The interface is designed without any “Click Here” links.
• The visibility of active panel and invisibility of inactive panels provide clear accessibility to the user.
• The main constraint is privacy. The user can login their account by registering their basic details. It is maintained by the administrator. So, no one can steal the user’s sensitive information, from the interface.
• To attract the user, the professional colors were used in the design so that the user can understand the functionalities of each panel, without any misunderstanding.

As the first interface design has the efficient usability when compared to the secondary interface design, it is considered as the best solution.

The Pencil tool is the open source GUI prototyping tool and it supports all the platforms. It is used to create mockups in popular desktop platforms. The pencil software provides the default shape’s collection, for drawing various kinds of user interface alternating from desktop to other platforms. To obtain the best solution for the interface design, the “Pencil Software” is used. By using the Pencil tool, the interface for solar home management is designed efficiently.

Conclusion 

User interface is designed for the solar system. It satisfies the given requirements. This interface contains solar home management page, solar page, daily, monthly page, battery page and grid page. This user interface has simple design and it is user friendly. Pencil tool is used for designing the user interface. Advantages of the user interface are listed. It is very easy to implement this design. This interface is designed based on wire shape. It also has inter page linking facility. The respective interface diagrams are provided.