From prototypes to fully functional: an energy success story

The Mission

(we chose to accept it)

CPower helps customers earn revenue and reduce energy costs while increasing grid reliability and resilience.

Leadership was staffing up an engineering team, but also had a high-priority need to develop a real-time simulation system.

Real-time, demand-side energy management is one of the most complex challenges in the field. Delivering sophisticated services like Demand Response (DR), Demand Management (DM), and controlling Distributed Energy Resources (DER) involves intricate measurement, monitoring, and reporting at scale.

The challenge is compounded by an evolving environment, such as the integration of solar energy panels, and the rapid growth in the number of supported devices.

VP of Utility Solutions Mike Ratliff — familiar with Test Double from previous work with Enbala, Cars.com, and Comverge — knew exactly who to call when it was time to advance from prototypes to fully functioning simulations built on Elixir.

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The Fix

Test Double stepped in to deliver functionality on a critical prototype, allowing the VP to focus on staffing up a team of new engineers. The software development work included:

Developing a system for both real-time simulation and “speculative” time-accelerated scenarios
Transitioning prototypes to core functionality in a new codebase using a functional style
Applying best practices in tooling, testing, and stories to build the right thing effectively

Our consultants also led onboarding efforts for new team members, transferred codebase knowledge, and identified potential next steps to further the work. Our contributions to the team included:

Instituting the practice of architectural decision records to provide long-term context on early development decisions.
Providing onboarding and pairing sessions with new engineers to catch them up on discussions and nuances of the codebase.
Sharing ideas around future areas to explore and encouraging meaningful discussions during code reviews.

CONSULTANTS

Tech & Techniques

Elixir
Real-time factor simulations

The Results

Test Double helped CPower advance from prototypes to fully functioning simulations built on Elixir.

We developed a system for both real-time simulation and “speculative” time-accelerated scenarios and ensured the new team was well-prepared through effective onboarding and pairing. This setup allowed them to maintain and grow the system efficiently.

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Simulation software development with time-dependent behavior & reproducible randomness

Architectural decision records for lasting impact on maintainable code

Icon of multiple people putting a cube together

Onboard new engineering team & get them up to speed quickly

Testimonial

Holistic Problem Solving

Matt Jones is a rock star. He has taken it upon himself to resolve several thorny issues. Just this morning he spiked out some code that made my request for the team to get a round-trip of a use case done super obvious about how to proceed. Bravo.

Mike Ratliff

CPower