Results for “consumer” — Page 74

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Preliminary Design of a Downstream Processing System for Protein Production in Space

Biomanufacturing is a promising technology to convert in situ resources into essential products including enzymes, therapeutics, biopolymers and other chemicals required to support deep-space missions that may not be easily supplied or produced by alternative means. In addition to the biomass production operations, vital down-stream steps including biomass harvesting/concentration, cell lysis, protein capture and purification are needed to produce an application-ready product. Commercially available terrestrial processes commonly require complex, heavy equipment and highly trained operators, which are not practical in deep space environments. In this work, we aim to identify approaches required to produce an intracellular, His-tagged recombinant enzyme using E. coli at 1 L production scales within the constraints of a deep-space mission as a model use-case scenario. Based on extensive literature review and commercially available products, we identified candidate technologies and products that could be integrated for deep space biomanufacturing. Different preliminary designs were then compared in terms of total system impacts on up-mass, processing time, and consumables required. Our analysis indicated that a biomass concentrator would significantly reduce the processing time and consumables required for the overall system without a large increase in the total mass. We also identified viable technologies for other steps such as cell lysis and protein purification. Predictions from our trade study will be validated in the laboratory by testing the most promising products with the results used to optimize the design. This research will help transfer technology that is well developed on Earth to a space-ready format to produce biological products from a wide variety of microorganisms that can support deep-space missions.

Biomanufacturing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Printed Sensors and Electronics for Sustained Human Spaceflight

As human spaceflight pushes beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), resupply of consumables becomes a significant challenge. One solution to this problem is In-Space Manufacturing (ISM), the capability to perform on-demand manufacturing and repair of consumables in an in-space environment. ISM offers significant flexibility to missions as it allows for a high degree of tailorability and reduction in launch mass. Leveraging advancements in fabrication, repair and recycling, ISM provides a highly sustainable and affordable solution to Exploration mission operations and logistics. In this talk, advances in printed electronics and sensors, ranging from nanomaterial ink development and hands-free fabrication methodologies to devices will be presented.

In Space Manufacturing↗

NASA NTRS2021

Plasma Assisted Trash Conversion with CO2 Carrier Gas

A sub-atmospheric plasma solid-to-gas conversion system operating under 500 W was tested to be viable for waste conversion to a gaseous state without the use of a feedstock gas as shown in previous plasma torch works. This manuscript lays the groundwork into the feasibility of low-pressure solid-to-gas conversion, reaction chemistry of the by-product gases, and power consumption. The results have shown the possibility of gasification at reduced pressures without the consumable use of a feedstock carrier gas in previous studies. Thus far, the percent gasification averaged around 36% in pre-pellet trials, with the system being far from optimized. The products include H2, CO2, CO, C2H4, and C2H6. Hydrogen production was higher as expected in a CO2-like environment once the gasification process begins. The energy required to generate the plasma was on the order of that previously reported at atmospheric pressures. The ability to eliminate the need for any consumables that were required in previous iterations greatly improves the cost and operational logistics of plasma gasification equipment. Although further development of the system is needed for increased gasification percentages, elimination of useable commodities greatly favors such a system for trash management beyond low Earth orbit.

Malay Shah↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Regenerative ECLSS and Logistics Analysis for Sustained Lunar Surface Missions

Sustained Lunar Campaign: Annual crew missions to the lunar surface with 2 to 4 crewmembers living in a Surface Habitat (SH) and/or a Pressurized Rover (PR) for 30 days or longer. Missions will require annual resupply of logistics to the lunar surface: Logistics include consumables, EVA consumables and spares, carriers, surface system spares and maintenance, and science and utilization. Water and gas (may) dominate the total logistics resupply: Water and gas = a direct function of the level of closure provided by the ECLSS in the Surface Habitat (SH) and the Pressurized Rover (PR). Logistics requirements will drive the number of required resupply landers, launch vehicles, and resupply costs. Goal of Paper: Determine a recommended regenerative ECLSS architecture option to minimize the tradeoff between ECLSS Delivery Mass and Logistics Resupply Mass

ECLSS↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Envisioned Future Priorities

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America (US) has initiated the Artemis Moon to Mars program to send astronauts (the first woman and person of color) back to the lunar surface, create a sustainable human lunar exploration program, and lead the first human exploration mission to the Mars surface in the 2030’s. A major objective of this program is to characterize the resources that exist on the Moon and Mars, and learn how to utilize them for sustained and affordable exploration. Commonly known as In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), the search for, acquisition, and processing of resources in space has the potential to greatly reduce the dependency on transporting mission consumables and infrastructure from Earth, thereby reducing mission costs, risks, and dependency on Earth. Through the extraction and processing of resources into mission commodities such as rocket propellants, life support consumables, and fuel cell reactants, ISRU enhances and evolves the cis-lunar, lander, and surface transportation systems required for human exploration; expanding and ehancing HOW humans get to, explore, and return from the Moon. Through the extraction and processing of resources into metals, silicon, and other manufacturing and construction feedstock, ISRU enhances and allows for the expansion of critical infrastructure through in situ manufacturing and construction capabilities needed for WHAT humans do on the Moon and in cis-lunar space. Because of this, ISRU supports and enables commercial involvement beyond NASA and governmental agencies by both lowering the cost of sustained transportation to/from/on the Moon as well as supporting the market required for needing these transportation systems. To achieve this vision, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) ensures the coordinated development of ISRU and other critical space and surface infrastructure elements such as propulsion, power, manufacturing, construction, and robotics through the Strategic Technology Architecture Roundtable (STAR) process. Through STAR, an integrated framework and process has been created allowing for capabilities and technologies to be linked and assessed, gaps to be identified, specifications and metrics to be established, and provide a means to prioritize and implement technology development and missions. For lunar ISRU, three primary areas of development have been initiated, (1) understanding, mapping, extracting, and processing water and other volatiles found in polar permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), (2) methods, technologies to extract oxygen from regolith, and (3) methods, technologies, and use cases for metals, silicon, and other feedstock commodities extracted and produced from lunar resources. This presentation will briefly discuss the STAR process and elaborate on the current status and future plans for ISRU development, demonstration, and architecture implementation of NASA’s Envisioned Future Priorities plan for ISRU.

In Situ Resource Utilization↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Uncrewed Lunar Surface Operations and Support Activities

A sustained human presence on the surface of the Moon and future missions to Mars require increased independence from surface crews and Earth-based mission control to operate efficiently, safely, and reliably. The number of astronauts and the availability of the surface crew to perform tasks will be limited, and extravehicular activities are burdensome and time-consuming. A balance of crewed and uncrewed surface operations will maximize crew exploration time by reducing their time dedicated to routine maintenance and support tasks. Certain sustaining activities that consume valuable crew time and preparation tasks such as staging and prepositioning equipment and materials can be performed without the crew, either before their arrival on the lunar surface or after their departure, thus improving task efficiency and mission effectiveness. This paper will define uncrewed operations and support activities and examine the functions, features, and capabilities that support sustained human and robotic surface operations. It will also discuss the extreme environmental challenges and the complexities associated with the development and operation of autonomous systems, as well as some suggested methods, techniques, and tools to overcome these challenges.

Lunar↗

NASA NTRS2022

Recommendations for Developing Space Suit Integrated Food Systems and Delivering Nutrition Before, During, and After Lunar EVA

The concept of providing hydration and nutrition during extravehicular activity (EVA) is nearly as old as the space program itself. Astronauts currently have access to 32 ounces of water through a disposable in-suit drink bag (DIDB) while they are confined to their space suit. During the Apollo program, methods for providing food/nutrition to crewmembers in space suits were included as contingency solutions (1) but were eventually abandoned. The main reasons that provision of in-suit nutrition beyond water was discontinued after Apollo were the complicated engineering requirements, the additional mass and volume that was required for the applicable food formulations, hardware needed for a suit-specialized food system, and because the perceived need for in-suit nutrition during EVAs was not sufficient during the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) eras. A custom-made 165-kcal fruit bar was fitted into the EVA suit during the Space Shuttle program, but crewmembers rarely consumed it during the EVA and rather chose to consume it before or after suited activities (2). Since 2011, between 4 and 13 EVAs have been conducted from the ISS each year, with durations ranging from 1:32 to 8:17 hours (https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/spacewalks ). It has been acceptable for the crewmembers to schedule food intake around these relatively infrequent suited activities. Because upcoming Artemis missions will include nominal 8-hour lunar exploration EVAs that are expected to increase in frequency to several (4 to 5) sorties per week (3), the desire for an in-suit nutrition system has increased. In preparation for these missions, requirements to provide in-suit nutrition has been outlined in the most recent NASA Human Spaceflight Standards documents (4). Establishing general recommendations for in-suit nutrition systems precedes the selection of a lunar EVA pressure suit system. The current document is intended to define the rationale for nutrition to support EVA (whether in-suit or from the pantry in the habitat), document the requirements, constraints, and crewmember preferences, and recommend necessary next steps for developing an in-suit EVA nutrition system. Assessments presented in this report include a review of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) food products as potential in-suit formulations, a comparison of conceptual designs for delivering nutrition to a crewmember while confined to a space suit, an evaluation of space suit volume constraints for the placement of in-suit nutrition systems, and feedback from astronauts regarding preferences for nutrition support during EVA. Based on these assessments, recommendations were formulated that can be used to help develop a method to deliver nutrition safely and acceptably to a crewmember while they are confined to a space suit for an EVA duration of up to 8 hours, and a total time in the suit of up to 12 hours.

space suit↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

From Regolith to Living Off the Land: Formulating a Data Model to Catalog Lunar Construction Materials

Artemis Program objectives for sustainable, long-term presence on the Moon and more distant planetary surfaces will require learning to “Live off the Land”, relying on in-situ resource utilization to produce infrastructure and building materials from lunar regolith, icy subsurface deposits, and residual waste materials. Meeting demand for consumables while scaling development with resources found within the landing zone will require detailed data on the geology and environment of the lunar surface. Lunar infrastructure development will generate vast amounts of new engineering data regarding availability of processed feedstocks and their performance in building materials. Lunar engineering data accessible to program partners, research institutions and industry may help situate processes and specifications within the in-situ GIS context. Lunar missions to date have generated geological and ice favorability maps of the lunar surface, and recent technology studies have tested automated construction systems and novel material formulations using regolith simulants and binders. Current discussions focus on identifying key feedstocks, quantities required for nominal mission scenarios and infrastructure plans, and mapping the value chain from regolith to feedstock to consumables and construction materials.

lunar construction↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

From Regolith to Living Off the Land: Formulating a Data Model to Catalog Lunar Construction Materials

Artemis Program objectives for sustainable, long-term presence on the Moon and more distant planetary surfaces will require learning to “Live off the Land”, relying on in-situ resource utilization to produce infrastructure and building materials from lunar regolith, icy subsurface deposits, and residual waste materials. Meeting demand for consumables while scaling development with resources found within the landing zone will require detailed data on the geology and environment of the lunar surface. Lunar infrastructure development will generate vast amounts of new engineering data regarding availability of processed feedstocks and their performance in building materials. Lunar engineering data accessible to program partners, research institutions and industry may help situate processes and specifications within the in-situ GIS context. Lunar missions to date have generated geological and ice favorability maps of the lunar surface, and recent technology studies have tested automated construction systems and novel material formulations using regolith simulants and binders. Current discussions focus on identifying key feedstocks, quantities required for nominal mission scenarios and infrastructure plans, and mapping the value chain from regolith to feedstock to consumables and construction materials.

lunar construction↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Excavation of Exploration Toilet Fecal Canister from ISS Operations and Future Mission Impacts

Space exploration requires accommodations for crew members similar to survival on Earth including food and water, clothing, and protection from the environment. In addition, allowances for biological processes such as breathing, defecation and urination must be provided. In a micro-gravity environment, these are particularly challenging. Optimizing the consumables needed for these activities is a vital part of the spacecraft design as well as providing mass/volume for science cargo and the crew needs such as food and clothing. NASA has collected use rates for the consumables needed for defecation and urination over the decades of human-rated space travel. Most recently, the exploration toilet demonstration on International Space Station (ISS) provided data on defecation in the form of a returned canister which collected 13 days of fecal deposits, wipes, gloves and compaction plates. The canister was excavated by a dedicated team of engineers at Johnson Space Center (JSC) to provide the latest information on deposit size and weight, number of wipes and gloves used, and compaction efficiency which directly relates to the number of canisters needed. Although this is only one canister, the data found has been directly applied to manifest decisions for the Orion Artemis-2 mission. Future canisters will add to this data set. Details on what was found and how it compares to historical numbers as well as how it will be used for exploration missions will be covered in this paper.

Toilet↗

NASA NTRS2024

Input Waste Stream Modeling for Trash Management, Recycling, and Manufacturing Processes

Astronaut waste is an important aspect of the planning and execution of long-term crewed missions, especially to the Moon and Mars. However, as new technologies arise and mission planning evolves, the projected composition of the waste similarly evolves. This poses a problem for researchers who are investigating various approaches to mitigating crew waste, since the investigation of each new waste-mitigation technology typically uses a static waste composition that is based on a simulant developed at the time of the research; several such waste simulants have been developed over recent years. To mitigate the ‘moving target’ aspect of crew waste composition and use, researchers at NASA KSC have developed a computational tool wherein researchers can adjust the composition of the crew waste, as well as other important parameters such as crew size, mission duration, and waste mitigation method (e.g., incineration, compaction, jettison, etc.). The computational tool then returns important mission metrics such as waste-related mass reduction, power consumed, water produced or consumed, elemental mass balance, and available feedstock for in-space manufacturing (ISM) applications. This tool can then be used to adjust aspects of a waste model (e.g., removal of metal aluminum (Al) for ISM applications) and determine an associated set of metrics in order to inform mission planning.

Ray Pitts↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Excavation of Exploration Toilet Fecal Canister From ISS Operations and Future Mission Impacts

Space exploration requires accommodations for crew members similar to survival on Earth including food and water, clothing, and protection from the environment. In addition, allowances for biological processes such as breathing, defecation and urination must be provided. In a micro-gravity environment, these are particularly challenging. Optimizing the consumables needed for these activities is a vital part of the spacecraft design as well as providing mass/volume for science cargo and the crew needs such as food and clothing. NASA has collected use rates for the consumables needed for defecation and urination over the decades of human-rated space travel. Most recently, the exploration toilet demonstration on International Space Station (ISS) provided data on defecation in the form of a returned canister which collected 13 days of fecal deposits, wipes, gloves and compaction plates. The canister was excavated by a dedicated team of engineers at Johnson Space Center (JSC) to provide the latest information on deposit size and weight, number of wipes and gloves used, and compaction efficiency which directly relates to the number of canisters needed. Although this is only one canister, the data found has been directly applied to manifest decisions for the Orion Artemis-2 mission. Future canisters will add to this data set. Details on what was found and how it compares to historical numbers as well as how it will be used for exploration missions will be covered in this paper.

Toilet↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Excavation of Exploration Toilet Fecal Canister from ISS Operations and Future Mission Impacts

Space exploration requires accommodations for crew members similar to survival on Earth including food and water, clothing, and protection from the environment. In addition, allowances for biological processes such as breathing, defecation and urination must be provided. In a micro-gravity environment, these are particularly challenging. Optimizing the consumables needed for these activities is a vital part of the spacecraft design as well as providing mass/volume for science cargo and the crew needs such as food and clothing. NASA has collected use rates for the consumables needed for defecation and urination over the decades of human-rated space travel. Most recently, the exploration toilet demonstration on International Space Station (ISS) provided data on defecation in the form of a returned canister which collected 13 days of fecal deposits, wipes, gloves and compaction plates. The canister was excavated by a dedicated team of engineers at Johnson Space Center (JSC) to provide the latest information on deposit size and weight, number of wipes and gloves used, and compaction efficiency which directly relates to the number of canisters needed. Although this is only one canister, the data found has been directly applied to manifest decisions for the Orion Artemis-2 mission. Future canisters will add to this data set. Details on what was found and how it compares to historical numbers as well as how it will be used for exploration missions will be covered in this paper.

Toilet↗

NASA NTRS2025

Innovative Drug Selection, Storage, and Shelf-Life Strategies for Exploration Spaceflight

Medications have been a part of space travel dating back to the Apollo missions. A safe and effective medication formulary is essential to maintaining crew health and performance during long-duration spaceflight outside of low Earth orbit (LEO). Distance from Earth creates four key operational changes that increase medical risks, including communication, resupply, crewmember health, and evacuation. The current spaceflight pharmaceutical formulary consists of medications indicated to treat a variety of anticipated medical events and healthcare needs during spaceflight, but depends on a robust consumables resupply chain, which may be strained for a Lunar, and possibly non-existent for a Mars mission. The specific medications selections for the formulary may change to optimally align with the mission, crew compliment, and spacecraft design. Medical support at long-duration exploration missions will differ from LEO missions due to mission duration, lack of consumables resupply, prolonged exposure to space radiation, and the absence of emergency medical return capability. Loss of medication resupply limits or removes the ability to replace medications that have been exhausted or degraded, potentially exacerbating the medical risk posture. To address these anticipated risks, long-duration missions must consider use of novel medical technologies, treatment modalities, and smart medical systems that offer greater crew autonomy, such as physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling, drug repurposing, on demand drug synthesis, or wearable drug delivery / monitoring devices. Once an ideal formulary for exploration space is determined, it is essential to establish the chemical and physical stability of each medication compound, as well as its safety by identifying its degradation profiles and products. Although few studies have been conducted to provide evidence on the physicochemical stability of pharmaceuticals during space missions, the data suggests that the spaceflight environment may promote degradation in some pharmaceuticals. Formulary drug purity and efficacy should be verified by pharmaceutical stability assessments, and can be realized non-destructively, and accessed in remote environments. Non-destructive pharmaceutical analysis and statistical modelling techniques could optimize exploration spaceflight medical care by enabling early detection of suboptimal therapeutics. Likewise, novel packaging, storage strategies, and dosage form innovations are promising countermeasures to optimize pharmaceutical shelf life, purity, and quality of exploration spaceflight medications. As we prepare for more distant exploration missions, risk management planning for astronaut healthcare should include the assembly of a medication formulary that is comprehensive enough to prevent or treat anticipated medical events, remains safe and chemically stable, and retains sufficient potency to last for the duration of the mission. Following extensive review of the literature, we will present innovative formulary optimization strategies, pharmaceutical stability assessment techniques, and storage and packaging solutions that could enhance drug safety and efficacy for future exploration spaceflight missions.

Vernie R Daniels↗

DOE OSTI2011

The Feasibility of Moving PMU Data in the Future Power Grid

The power grid is a complex network connecting electricity providers with their consumers. With an increasing consumer base requiring more resources and the requirement to integrate significant renewable sources, maintaining the network requires new and innovative management solutions. To manage this complexity and provide precise, real-time views of the grid, Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are undergoing widespread deployment. These units provide measurements as often as 60 times per second, with an accurate time identifier attached to each reading, enabling real-time monitoring of the network. However, this new capability generates much more data than the current infrastructure is designed to handle. With the expectation that there will eventually be tens of thousands of PMUs monitoring the transmission lines, the power community is looking towards accumulating multiple terabytes of data per day - several orders of magnitude beyond current data acquisition rates. This has led to questions being raised in the power community about whether or not a significant research effort is required to effectively transfer the volume of information generated by these new data streams. This paper answers that question by comparing a worst-case data generation scenario with several alternative networking protocols and historical trends in protocol advancement. Based on this analysis we are able to conclude that transferring the information between the PMUs and the resulting data repositories is feasible. We recognize that there are issues beyond transferring the data that need to be addressed such as effective access to historical data, data transfer latency, cyber security, and data analysis. There is also an extensive engineering trade-off that the power companies will need to make to decide the best mix of networking protocols for their particular PMU deployments, since that requires significant assumptions about proprietary information including deployment cost, deployment schedules, PMU locations, and available resources.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2012

COMBUSTION-ASSISTED CO2 CAPTURE USING MECC MEMBRANES

Mixed Electron and Carbonate ion Conductor (MECC) membranes have been proposed as a means to separate CO{sub 2} from power plant flue gas. Here a modified MECC CO{sub 2} capture process is analyzed that supplements retentate pressurization and permeate evacuation as a means to create a CO{sub 2} driving force with a process assisted by the catalytic combustion of syngas on the permeate side of the membrane. The combustion reactions consume transported oxygen, making it unavailable for the backwards transport reaction. With this change, the MECC capture system becomes exothermic, and steam for electricity production may be generated from the waste heat. Greater than 90% of the CO{sub 2} in the flue gas may be captured, and a compressed CO{sub 2} product stream is produced. A fossil-fueled power plant using this process would consume 14% more fuel per unit electricity produced than a power plant with no CO{sub 2} capture system, and has the potential to meet U.S. DOE's goal that deployment of a CO{sub 2} capture system at a fossil-fueled power plant should not increase the cost of electricity from the combined facility by more than 30%.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2012

A common path forward for the immersive visualization community

Immersive visualization makes use of the medium of virtual reality (VR) - it is a subset of virtual reality focused on the application of VR technologies to scientific and information visualization. As the name implies, there is a particular focus on the physically immersive aspect of VR that more fully engages the perceptual and kinesthetic capabilities of the scientist with the goal of producing greater insight. The immersive visualization community is uniquely positioned to address the analysis needs of the wide spectrum of domain scientists who are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by data. The outputs of computational science simulations and high-resolution sensors are creating a data deluge. Data is coming in faster than it can be analyzed, and there are countless opportunities for discovery that are missed as the data speeds by. By more fully utilizing the scientists visual and other sensory systems, and by offering a more natural user interface with which to interact with computer-generated representations, immersive visualization offers great promise in taming this data torrent. However, increasing the adoption of immersive visualization in scientific research communities can only happen by simultaneously lowering the engagement threshold while raising the measurable benefits of adoption. Scientists time spent immersed with their data will thus be rewarded with higher productivity, deeper insight, and improved creativity. Immersive visualization ties together technologies and methodologies from a variety of related but frequently disjoint areas, including hardware, software and human-computer interaction (HCI) disciplines. In many ways, hardware is a solved problem. There are well established technologies including large walk-in systems such as the CAVE{trademark} and head-based systems such as the Wide-5{trademark}. The advent of new consumer-level technologies now enable an entirely new generation of immersive displays, with smaller footprints and costs, widening the potential consumer base. While one would be hard-pressed to call software a solved problem, we now understand considerably more about best practices for designing and developing sustainable, scalable software systems, and we have useful software examples that illuminate the way to even better implementations. As with any research endeavour, HCI will always be exploring new topics in interface design, but we now have a sizable knowledge base of the strengths and weaknesses of the human perceptual systems and we know how to design effective interfaces for immersive systems. So, in a research landscape with a clear need for better visualization and analysis tools, a methodology in immersive visualization that has been shown to effectively address some of those needs, and vastly improved supporting technologies and knowledge of hardware, software, and HCI, why hasn't immersive visualization 'caught on' more with scientists? What can we do as a community of immersive visualization researchers and practitioners to facilitate greater adoption by scientific communities so as to make the transition from 'the promise of virtual reality' to 'the reality of virtual reality'.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2012

An Integrated Geovisual Analytics Framework for Analysis of Energy Consumption Data and Renewable Energy Potentials

We present an integrated geovisual analytics framework for utility consumers to interactively analyze and benchmark their energy consumption. The framework uses energy and property data already available with the utility companies and county governments respectively. The motivation for the developed framework is the need for citizens to go beyond the conventional utility bills in understanding the patterns in their energy consumption. There is also a need for citizens to go beyond one-time improvements that are often not monitored and measured over time. Some of the features of the framework include the ability for citizens to visualize their historical energy consumption data along with weather data in their location. The quantity of historical energy data available is significantly more than what is available from utility bills. An overlay of the weather data provides users with a visual correlation between weather patterns and their energy consumption patterns. Another feature of the framework is the ability for citizens to compare their consumption on an aggregated basis to that of their peers other citizens living in houses of similar size and age and within the same or different geographical boundaries, such as subdivision, zip code, or county. The users could also compare their consumption to others based on the size of their family and other attributes. This feature could help citizens determine if they are among the best in class . The framework can also be used by the utility companies to better understand their customers and to plan their services. To make the framework easily accessible, it is developed to be compatible with mobile consumer electronics devices.

energy apps↗