PowerShaper Flex user flow

Prospective enrollers for PowerShaper Flex can be either users with Carbon Co-op account or anonymous users. This was altered from users-only in the 2021 iteration of the trial to widen the possible participant. There is no requirement to allow anonymous users and this could be again restricted to users-only in the future.

The enrolment process differs slightly depending on their status as described above.

The process for anonymous users is as follows:

  1. A user starts the enrolment process by visting /flex/signup. This creates an Enrolment record for the User. - If the user is anonymous, they are prompted to enter their email address:

    • If this matches a user in our database, they are asked to login.

    • Otherwise their email is saved to the Enrolment.

    • If they are logged in, we associate that User to the Enrolment.

  2. The user is asked a variety of questions about their Energy Smart Appliance (ESA) setup at home.

  3. There is an automatic eligibility calculator which was used for the 2019 service, but this was not used for the 2021 service. Manual assessment was conducted for the 2021 enrolments. Some maintainance of the eligibility calculator is suggested if this is to be used in future.

  4. All enrolments (completed or otherwise) are available to admins in the relevant section of the admin site. This is where the manual assessment can be conducted.

  5. After assessment, successful enrolments should get approved_by_admin=True, which can be done from their enrolment page in the flex admin, or on the django admin site. A Participant account is created using the dsr_enrolment.services.enrol_user() method, along with as many Assets (currently only immersion heater and/or EV charger) as are applicable based on the enrolment form responses. This can be acheived by clicking the “Enrol manually now” button in their enrolment record.

  6. The installation of the appliances (EVSE and/or Shelly controller for immersion heaters) is then arranged by Carbon Co-op staff and carried out by contractors.

  7. A Jobsheet is available which supports the installation of the HEMS by a member of Carbon Co-op staff.

  8. The shortcode provided on this Jobsheet is entered into the PowerShaper Home Assistant integration on a HEMS installed in the property by the Carbon Co-op installer. This calls an API endpoint in the PowerShaper application, which exchanges information to lock the HEMS to the Participant, create a Customer and Site for it on the VTN, and trigger an exchange of certificates to establish encrypted communication between the HEMS and the VTN.

  9. The VTN is then polled daily for new events taking place (`dsr_notifications.tasks.poll_for_upcoming_events()`). PowerShaper notifies Participants, according to their notification preferences, of upcoming events giving no more than a week’s notice of each event.

  10. Participants can opt out of upcoming events through their user panel and also review the results of their participation here.