The Appliance Calculator allows users to enter the appliances wish to compare, how long they use them for and how much they pay for their electricity. It then provides a table ordered from most to least expensive.
Controllers, views and components have been scoped to the ApplianceCalculator namespace.
The app uses the wizard_steps gem to provide the multi-step form functionality to create a DailyUsage object. These are stored in the
session (up to a maximum of 10) and rendered into the UsagesTableComponent.
The app is iframed into an advice page using the InteractiveToolRenderer in the public-website repo. A content type exists in Contentful that represents a tool and allows it to be embedded into an advice collection. The renderer in public website then creates and renders an InteractiveToolComponent, which is essentially an iframe with a src that points to this application.
The iframe is resized as instructed by the postMessage sent to the parent window via the js in the app/javascript/modules/resize-iframe.js module.
There are some more notes in the public website docs: interactive tool docs.
Appliances in the app are represented by the Appliance content type. Like intranet content, test and production data are both stored in the master Contentful environment. The test tag in Contentful is used to distinguish between the two.
Details of the model fields and their meanings can be found in the energy team's Google Drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WhrKpLv7HiOKMuSQ_APuD38Pi6w3ouiY7AvZsjTMQQs/edit?usp=sharing
There are two types of appliance: cyclical and time based. Cyclical appliances have fixed consumptions each time they are used, like a washing machine. Time based usages have variable consumptions that depend on how long they are used for, like a TV. The CyclicalDailyUsage and TimeBasedDailyUsage objects contain the logic for working out kWh consumption based on the data entered by the user.
The calculator shows a default unit rate for electricity, so that a user doesn't have to find theirs when using the tool. This is updated quarterly to reflect changes in the national average.
It's stored as a config value in pence per kWh as a config value
The digital energy team will ask in advance of when the change needs to happen.
Appliance calculator analytics summary Appliance calculator content model Appliance cost calcs (washing machines) Appliance cost calcs (ovens)