How we created a data analytics platform to optimize energy assets

Our private equity team at CAMS developed an industry shifting energy data monitoring application used by fortune 500 companies.

This is an example of plotting Edward Lorenz’s 1963 “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” in a 3-dimensional space using mplot3d.

Because this is a simple non-linear ODE, it would be more easily done using SciPy’s ODE solver, but this approach depends only upon NumPy.

def lorenz(x, y, z, s=10, r=28, b=2.667):
    x_dot = s*(y - x)
    y_dot = r*x - y - x*z
    z_dot = x*y - b*z
    return x_dot, y_dot, z_dot
plt.show()

At CAMS —Consolidated Asset Mangement Services— the founding principle is to add value through superior management and operation of our clients’ infrastructure assets. However, we found an area of opportunity after observing that the company’s clients —who were asset owners— did not have access to succinct and real-time information on the financial and operational performance of individual assets.

Building the eTRAC platform eTRAC is a CAMS proprietary software marketed as a (PaaS) —platform as a service— which provides real-time financial intelligence for energy generation assets. The goal of the platform was to effectively consolidate all the data that was being collected and have the available data visualizations at any given moment.

This was very valuable for providing insights into the data to the clients of the company, and internal Asset Managers who could use it for statistical analysis. Furthermore, our software monitored terabytes of real-time and forecasted data such as system conditions and price reports from multiple energy projects like conventional power plants, to renewable energy sources like wind farms.

We hired Brian to support the agile development of a new application, that we were rolling out to some of our private equity clients. —Rick Knauth (VP)

Picture with the team Josh Bryant, me, Rick Knauth My contributions to key features lorem ipsum Eos ut et iusto. Sequi dicta ut qui esse perspiciatis voluptatem error nisi. Non nemo repellendus ut exercitationem molestiae error veniam. Cum natus illo quisquam ut delectus voluptatem. Nam voluptas ut sint. Corrupti qui odio voluptas ipsa non corporis cum aut.

Aut omnis quas voluptatem molestias voluptatem. Et sit architecto sed accusamus omnis qui. The following are some of the key characteristics and selling points for the eTRAC platform:

Automated web scraping Real time monitoring and forecasts Mobile and cross-platform responsive

Building the data pipeline I worked hands on with the automated data pipeline for the eTRAC project. This was my first experience with cloud computing and big-data (most of which came from ERCOT), but I quickly absorbed what it meant to work on AWS EC2 Linux nodes, how to access and store files from scalable AWS S3 buckets, and other tools and services like Docker and SSH.

Once our data was processed and cleaned with defined Pandas + NumPy fuctions(s), the site would then render matplotlib based data visualizations onto the respective Flask web applications. And, all of this was being continuously repeated and updated by the minute.

technology used 3. Responsive web design Although our applications were very powerful and provided our clients a great amount of insight into their data, the user interface and overall user-experience left more to be desired.

mockup ui New mobile interface Therefore, outside of my regular office hours, I took the initiative to layout some mockups and wireframing using Figma, and presented them to the lead engineer. After getting the approval I designed and implemented a device responsive grid using Bootstrap.

He (Brian) also demonstrated a talent for UI / UX, by designing a new interface that was intuitive, fast, and accessible. Our customers were very pleased!

My approach was to create a user experience where all the operations were intuitive and not overwhelming given the large amount of functionality. Considering that an estimated 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, this is something that cannot be overseen. A good UI not only gives a good looking website but can also lead to potential customers and increased user satisfaction, along building a positive brand image.

responsive ui Mockup across all devices Conclusion In the end, we were able to create a new SaaS application that was easy to use, and provided our clients with a great amount of information.