Renewable energy community network

Handling emerging ecological issues means providing sound economics and implementing cleantech solutions. To ensure timely and widespread adoption, clean energy must become affordable, reliable, and accessible.

Abto Software is happy to apply field-specific knowledge and experience to contribute to the global initiative. To accelerate positive changes and mitigate the many negative impacts of today’s climate change, our team took over the development of a cloud-based environment that simplifies the interaction between organizations and providers in the renewables industry.

We designed a solution to streamline:

• Direct communication and cooperation between experts
• Project and product management
• Insight-driven decision-making
• Market investigation

The delivered renewable energy community network is built to benefit:

• Organizations, decision-makers
  – Quick evaluation of projects and products
  – Easy exploration of technologies
  – Direct engagement with other community members
• Service providers
  – Quick navigation in a changing market
  – Streamlined expansion of the client base
  – Active promotion 

We focused on replacing an outdated, inefficient environment that lacked core functionality and robustness. The solution in place has hindered the client from achieving further growth and attracting potential customers.

The project’s main goals can be reduced to:

1. Optimized management through simplified activity tracking
2. CMS design
3. Third-party integrations
4. File security
5. GDPR compliance
6. AAD B2C user flows and built-in, custom policies
7. A user-friendly, responsive design

Main functionality

Based on their roles, the users can access following features:

• Admin management
  – User management
  – Company management
  – Tool management
  – Announcement management
  – Forum
  – Learn
  – Events
  – Alert settings
• Dashboard page
• Projects catalog 
  – Project filtering by type, technology, location, latitude, longitude, and other project details
  – Resource browsing
• Project library 
  – Project exploration by type, last modification date, location, project owner, and status
  – Project editing (editing, deactivating, duplicating, deleting)
• Learn page – a page with relevant educational content
• Event page – a page with both upcoming and past events
• Tools – a page to access useful tools:
  – Strategy calculator
  – Corporate goals & targets
  – Energy Attribute Certificate
  – Global Opportunity Navigator
• Community – a page to engage with the global community
  – Browse members
  – Contact users
  – Save companies
  – Review publicly shared information

Platform structure

For the educational page containing relevant education content we chose the open-source WordPress CMS. This allows to manage published articles and tags.

The designed backend solution built with .NET 6 contains several major projects:

• Core project (Domain services, Entities, Enums, DbContext, Migrations)
• Infrastructure project (API Clients (GraphAPI and WordPress API), emailing implementation, and some other services to work with components such as Cognitive Search)
• WebAPI project (API Models, Controllers, Filters, View Models, Model Binders, Middleware, Validators)
• Common project (Base Entities, Common Interfaces, Common Attributes, Common Extensions)

Our team covered the following tasks:

1. Backend development
2. Frontend development
3. CMS implementation:

• CMS configuration to provide the opportunity to create and manage content like articles, images, videos, PDF and audio files
• Data synchronization
• File security
• In-app and email notifications
• Activity tracking
• Smart filtering
• User authentication
• Role-based access

Main challenges faced during the project:

File security

To protect media files viewed by the end-user from being  shared externally, we provided:

• File storage
  – Media files (during creation of articles) on WordPress are being automatically uploaded to Azure Storage (Blob Container) via a specific plugin.
  – Media files (during discussion of topics or messaging) on the main website are being automatically uploaded in the same way and stored in the Azure Account.
• File security
  We ensured file security via configured Blob containers’ privacy policy and a SAS token generated by our API.

Data synchronization

Another task was to integrate WP, which required the synchronization of content with the website’s database. We implemented DataTime variables, which are being checked by our REST API to update the database as soon as a manual or automatic trigger goes off.

Advanced search

The platform didn’t provide for an advanced search, so we set up Azure Search using the Pull model for the Azure SQL Database Views as the data source which provides the opportunity to integrate intuitive search within categories into our Web API with the appropriate SDK.

Considering different time zones for the calendar view

The system didn’t provide the possibility to organize upcoming events considering different time zones, so we came up with customizing Syncfusion’s Angular Schedule component to calculate the user time zones based on the browser time zone and display the event in the profile calendar.

With serious environmental pollution, a consensus is formed around the urgent need to extract green energy. This requires digital innovation to unleash the possibilities of a proactive collaboration.

Our solution brings together influential leaders for simplified cleantech buying and opening new opportunities. It connects community members to discuss promising ideas, follow up and attend exclusive events, and adopt technological advances to create sustainability solutions.

The robust, highly scalable, and secure renewable energy community network allows:

• Cleantech buyers to
  – Evaluate readiness, baseline, budget, corporate goals and targets, and other influential factors
  – Explore technologies and solutions
  – Interact with technology experts and peers to share best practices
• Cleantech providers to
  – Explore trends and demand in the dynamic corporate renewables market
  – Establish contacts and expand the current customer base
  – Promote custom decarbonization opportunities within an active community 

The solution is aimed to facilitate:

Efficient partnerships

The functionality of the cloud platform allows members to improve direct communication and cooperation. Browsing and contacting professionals, saving companies and content, reviewing publicly shared information are just some features to mention.    

Day-to-day management

The on-demand, cloud-based platform helps optimize operational processes within company or project. Business leaders can enjoy simplified user, company, tool, announcement and event management.