Ideaz

Among the biggest real-world issues today is energy wastage in college campuses and government offices, primarily through inefficient use of electricity in classrooms, labs, and dormitories. Unoccupied rooms are maintained supplied with fans, lights, and projectors. That not only raises electricity bills, that contributes to the carbon footprint as well.

Today, many campuses use manual switching or simple timers that don't work. Advanced products are available in the industry, yet they are either out of price reach or not sized right for large educational institutions in developing nations. That leaves a definite gap between availability of mass-produced, price-effective, and easy-to-use systems and today's absence of same.

My plan is to develop an economically-priced, IoT-enabled smart energy management system through microcontrollers such as ESP32 or Arduino Uno. These can be integrated with PIR (Passive Infrared) motion sensors to track occupancy, LDRs (Light Dependent Resistors) for tracking natural light, and DHT11 sensors for tracking temperature and humidity. Lighting, fan, and AC can be automatically regulated based on data from sensors. ESP32, through integrated Wi-Fi, facilitates wirelessly transmitted data to a server that can be centrally monitored to display usage statistics.

Its biggest beneficiaries are students, professors, and colleges. Students enjoy a better, technology-enabled space, and colleges reduce their electricity bills by quite a bit. Administrators can see real-time dashboards of consumption and of the amount they save. This project matters to me for two reasons. Firstly, it is straight application of all that we learn in microcontrollers, sensors, and communication to solve a day-to-day issue. It promotes green campuses, is cost-effective, and provides a template that can be scaled up for use in schools, offices, and residential neighborhoods.