Community Solar Energy Bank: donating solar credits you already have
This is a submission for Weekend Challenge: Generosity Edition What I Built Community Solar Energy Bank is a platform that lets people and businesses with residential or commercial solar panels donate their surplus energy credits directly to low-income families in Brazil, through NGOs connected to each family's utility company. The idea: in Brazil's net-metering system, a solar panel owner who…
The Community Solar Energy Bank is an online platform that allows people and businesses with extra solar energy credits to donate them directly to low-income families in Brazil. The system works through NGOs connected to the utility companies that serve these families. In Brazil's net-metering system, solar panel owners who generate more energy than they consume accumulate credits with their utility company, but these credits often go unused.
Low-income families, served by the same utility, struggle with high electricity bills. This project connects the two by redirecting the existing energy credits without the need for any additional money. The project uses real data for states and utility companies (such as Light in RJ, Enel in SP/CE/GO, and Equatorial in MA/PA/PI) but only partial coverage is shown.
NGOs are entirely fictional. The donation process involves selecting a state on the map, choosing the utility serving it, picking an NGO, entering the number of kWh of surplus solar credit to donate, reviewing a checklist generated by AI, confirming the transfer, and seeing the impact reflected on an aggregated dashboard. The code for this demo can be found on GitHub.
The project was built for a DEV Weekend Challenge hackathon and is a simulation, with no real utility integration or energy transfer occurring.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
