PROJECT BRIEF: SmartHome Energy Dashboard

Client: GreenTech Solutions Inc.
Date: February 2026
Contact: Maria Rodriguez, VP of Product

Background:
GreenTech Solutions is a mid-size company specializing in residential solar panel
installations. They currently serve 15,000 households across the western United States.
Their existing customer portal is outdated and provides only basic consumption data.

Problem:
Homeowners with solar panels lack real-time visibility into their energy production,
consumption, and savings. The current portal shows monthly summaries with a 48-hour
delay. Customers frequently call support asking about their current energy status,
costing the company approximately $180,000 annually in support overhead.

Proposed Solution:
Build a real-time energy dashboard accessible via web and mobile that shows:
- Live energy production from solar panels (updated every 5 minutes)
- Current household consumption broken down by major appliance categories
- Net energy balance (producing vs consuming)
- Historical trends (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
- Projected savings based on current patterns
- Weather integration showing impact on solar production

Technical Context:
- Solar inverters already transmit data via MQTT to a central broker
- Existing backend is Python/Django with PostgreSQL
- Current frontend is jQuery-based (needs modernization)
- API rate limit: 1000 requests/minute per household
- Must support 15,000 concurrent dashboard sessions

Budget Range: $250,000 - $350,000
Timeline Expectation: 6 months to production launch
Team Available: 2 backend engineers, 1 frontend engineer, 1 designer, 1 PM

Constraints:
- Must maintain backward compatibility with existing customer portal during migration
- SOC 2 Type II compliance required (already certified, must maintain)
- All data must remain within US data centers
- Support for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge (latest 2 versions)
- Mobile responsive (no native app required for v1)

Success Metrics:
- Support call reduction of 40% within 3 months of launch
- Dashboard load time under 2 seconds on 4G connection
- 60% monthly active user rate among solar customers
- Customer satisfaction score improvement from 3.2 to 4.0+
