Beam
A solar energy management system that optimizes cost-effectiveness and facilities energy sharing. Received an Honourable Mention in UX Design (2025 Student RGD Awards).
Timeline
Nov 2024
Team
Sam Overend, Jocelyn Zin
Tools & Skills
User Research, Product Design
Background
By 2040, it is estimated that almost one-third of the world’s electricity will come from solar energy.
This includes 10% from residential solar systems.
Solar energy is increasingly popular in home energy management systems. It harnesses renewable energy, saves money electricity bills, and reduces carbon footprints. As solar panels become cheaper and more efficient, we decided to explore how solar energy can be managed in smart homes.
Pain Points
Solar panels can generate excess electricity during summer, leading to a surplus of energy that often gets dumped.
With the rise of renewable energy sources, energy prices can vary greatly (even within a single day) due to dynamic tariffs.
Problem Statement
Users need a way to optimize their solar energy consumption based on cost-effectiveness.
Challenge
Our challenge was to create a physical product and accompanying mobile app to address efficiency problems regarding the use of solar energy in residential systems.
Competitive Analysis
We reviewed smart home products such as Ecobee, EcoFlow Smart Home Panel 2, and Google Nest to understand how they adapt to user routines and support automation. While these products offered useful design patterns, none of them addressed the issue of wasted surplus solar energy. This revealed a key opportunity for Beam.
Goals
Adjust temperature and turn on vacation mode from your phone.
Manage temperature automatically through occupancy detection.
Smart learning to adapt to user's routine.
Save excess energy in a portable power station.
Check real-time battery status and supply levels.
Facilitate energy sharing.
Personas
User Journey Map
Information Architecture
Solution
Beam is a wall-mounted smart interface paired with a mobile app for monitoring and optimizing home solar energy consumption.
Users have control over excess solar energy. They can save it for winter, share it with the grid, or sell it.
Integrates with solar panels, battery storage, and the grid for real-time insights and control over room or device.
Adapts to user routines and offers smart suggestions to optimize energy usage.
Design
For our design, we kept the interface modern and sleek to reflect the future-forward nature of the product. Colours were mostly limited to mustard yellow (to reflect solar energy) and greyscale tones.
Lessons Learned
Design can enable sustainable living.
This project reinforced how thoughtful design can make sustainable living more accessible and actionable.