powerfox energy platform development

The process

The power42 company sought a credible software development partner to proceed with the powerfox project due to the company's strong growth. They already had power optimization devices called poweropti which consumers could connect to energy meters and send energy data to a mobile application to monitor energy consumption. Typically, powerfox consumers used poweropti devices for PV systems, smart home systems, vacation property management, and smart charging. 

At the start of the collaboration, we supplied the in-house powerfox development team with mobile and backend engineers to reorient the existing application and build a more powerful backend architecture.

First, we initiated backend code refactoring because its architecture required an upgrade to make it more dynamic. We revealed the lack of some backend functions, partially insufficient backend structure, the absence of the dev environment, and the need for deeper code refactoring to proceed with the development. 

So we decided to develop a new backend with dev and prod environments on .Net technology to ensure the efficient and quick building and manual & automatic testing of the new app features. That is why we offered power42 to assemble a dedicated team that could cover all the necessary engineering processes, including project manager, DevOps, mobile and backend developers, and QA.

We had three primary tasks:

• To split the engineering process into development and production environments by creating the dev environment, where we proceed with developing.
• To build Android and iOS applications where consumers connect and monitor poweropti devices.
• To develop a couple of white-label apps for the client`s partners, particularly energy suppliers. 

As the team was set up, we upgraded the platform from .Net Core 3.1 to .Net Framework 6 to enhance software security and performance. Then we continued working on the new backend architecture to improve the general app performance and make the system able to scale. 

Lemberg Solutions built native iOS and Android apps, utilizing part of the functionality of the legacy Ionic solution. So far, mobile apps allow consumers to monitor real-time energy generation, consumption, and network supply. Also, users can compare their historical records with the current energy consumption data to keep track of energy distribution and tendencies within the connected devices.

However, the client has requested us to extend the functionality of new iOS and Android applications with the following features:

• Users can compare their energy consumption with other powerfox users in an anonymous way, applying filter criteria such as household type & size and specific electrical equipment used. It gives a complete understanding of how the energy is distributed and how you can optimize your wastage following the examples of other users.
• Users can choose the energy service provider and current tariffs to calculate their upcoming payments based on their energy consumption. 
• Users can set energy consumption limits for existing or newly connected devices and get alerts if any device goes beyond the specified limit will help consumers decrease energy wastage more efficiently. 

Our team also built and delivered two white-label apps for the powerfox partners. These apps keep the same functionality as the original powerfox apps, but they were adapted according to the partner's branded colors; they have new icons, logos, and new names.

Currently, we are in the middle of the development process. The Lemberg Solutions team proceeds with backend development and new production environments and prepares to implement the new mobile app features.