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5/24/2016 A weekend idea worth $4k: SolarMaps What brought you to the hackathon? Mark: I had attended the pitch sessions the previous year, and I was impressed with the ideas and energy that the teams brought to SunCode, and I knew that I wanted to participate next year. Our other team members did not have solar experience, but were very interested in the renewables space and wanted to compete. Why did you build SolarMaps? We built SolarMaps, because we recognized that the methods solar developers are currently using to reach customers are expensive and outdated. Many customers find the process of installing solar on their home intimidating and frustrating. We wanted to give customers a better way to adopt a great product that would also bring down the costs of the solar developers. How did you build SolarMaps? We started out by prototyping the UI on Sketch and then built it with Ruby on Rails as our front end and backend. How did you use UtilityAPI? What was the experience like? I have used UtilityAPI in my professional work to gather the utility data of a wide array of commercial clients interested in going solar (schools, municipalities, large enterprise customers, agricultural customers, etc.). UtilityAPI is orders of magnitude superior to requesting user data from the utilities directly. I can say with confidence that UtilityAPI has allowed people to go solar who would otherwise have been too frustrated by the process of gathering utility bills to actually get to the point of installation. It’s really a dramatic process improvement. What advice would you give to others who may attend a cleanweb hackathon? They are a great opportunity to share your ideas with dozens of very smart people with a huge range of experiences in the clean technologies space. No one brings a perfect idea or concept to a hackathon, and I would encourage people to attend, participate, and be open to the contributions of others. Team members
Anything else? We’re looking forward to collaborating with UtilityAPI, because we share the commitment to making it easier for people to go solar.
  Why did you come to the hackathon? Four of the team members have worked together for a while building all kinds of software applications and systems and we knew we were onto something with the idea. We love building software that tackles challenging problems. We were lucky to find an amazing and business-savvy 5th member of the team in Daniel. Why did you build EBits? The idea evolved from early conversations about a way to engage residential customers in a “game” that incentivises good practices for energy consumption. Quickly we realized that adding the “money” component to the idea was the way to go, and this is how the Ebits energy trading platform was born. Imagine a customer who can immediately capitalize on the investment to install solar panels or energy storage on her house by buying energy at a lower rate and reselling it at a higher one. We believe that a platform like Ebits is the future for effective and flexible energy distribution. How did you build EBits? The LabVIEW graphical programming language is at the backend, running the exchange server and the logic for each node. LabVIEW is also in charge of interacting with UtilityAPI to obtain data for a specific node and report it to the client. At the front end, a combination of AngularJS and D3.js are in charge of the user experience. The bridge between LabVIEW and JS is a combination of a RESTful API and websockets. How did you use UtilityAPI? What was the experience like? From the LabVIEW backend we query UtilityAPI to obtain the “interval” data - which is to say the meter information collected. We are looking at the energy consumption (kWh count) for each time interval and are using that in our calculations as well as displaying it to the user. Overall the experience was very rewarding. It was easy to pick up and get integrated with our system and the guys at UtilityAPI were very helpful in getting us the resources we needed to get started. What advice would you give to others who may attend a cleanweb hackathon? Do it! You’ll learn so much by just listening to other people’s experience and thoughts. Being immersed in the world of renewable energy will ignite new ideas and expand your worldview. Team members and their background
Anything else? The diversity among the attendees to the hackathon was inspiring - people from different backgrounds, ages, and countries coming together to literally try to make the world a better place. Kudos to SunCode event organizers! 
   5/17/2016 SunCode hackathon Recap UtilityAPI was out in full force during Powerhouse's SunCode hackathon May 13-14th. Every one of the winners used UtilityAPI! It was a wonderfully diverse crowd at the hackathon. Don't know what a hackathon is? Here is what a new-comer had to say about it. The podium: 1st Place - $4,000 - Solar Maps A visual display for the value of solar on buildings, facilitating a solar marketplace by sharing savings and encouraging referrals. 2nd Place - $3,000 - Ebits An online trading platform for future kilowatt hours. Read their story here! 3rd Place & People’s Choice Award - $3,000 - SunScore A new evaluation tool for potential community solar participants. Photos are on Facebook and twitter using #SunCode. The 3 min SunCode video steals the show.
 Last weekend over 100 people participated in the Powerhouse’s SunCode Hackathon. Participants spent hours hacking solar software ideas, designing breakthroughs, coding chaos, exploring their solar imaginations, and making awesome happen. Some even won $10,000 in cash. Sheela Sanei, pictured above closest to the window, was one of the Hackathon's participants. This is what she had to say about it:
What is the first thing you’d tell someone about this hackathon? A Hackathon is an incredibly energizing and inspiring experience. It helps bring reality to entrepreneurial-ism and proves that simply putting pen to paper can lead to real impact. The sense of paving the way of innovation is palpable. Why isn't SunCode every weekend? Hooray for Powerhouse and the dawn of a renewable energy era! In your own words, please describe what a hackathon is: A Hackathon is a short amount of time to think critically about how to creatively and practically solve problems and map out a framework for execution. The best outcomes are those that test feasibility of an idea on a high level and that result in a working prototype on a small scale. Why did you attend? I attended SunCode for many reasons: the opportunity to have a developer help bring one of my ideas to life, to network, to work with a fresh team, to augment my knowledge of where the solar industry is today, and, arguably most importantly, to challenge myself on what I could accomplish in one day without boundaries and alongside other fresh motivated minds. How did you come to attend the SunCode hackathon? I first heard about SunCode during an all-hands meeting at Powerhouse and asked how I could sign up. Tickets for business people were limited so I really appreciate Marie Washer going out of her way to make that possible. I attended the Powerhouse all-hands meeting one day while I was working on a personal project in the UtilityAPI space. Thanks, UtilityAPI! What did you do at the hackathon? I worked with a great team (pictured) to develop a tool to predict annual energy usage of specific single-family residences. The idea was that the tool could be used for lead generation. I was pretty impressed at our ability to develop a model with a reasonable error band and with a great interface in one day. I have endless admiration for Max and Paris--our fearless developers. The best part is that our concept is just the core of an idea that could expand at a fairly low cost to do many other things that reduce customer acquisition costs for solar installers. Learn more about UtilityAPI by exploring our website. Learn more about Powerhouse here. 5/11/2016 Live From Atlantic City UtilityAPI is now collecting data from Atlantic City Electric. Check out all of the utilities we cover here.
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