B2B

Appa Systems

Designing a municipality-wide electrical grid simulation and scenario planning tool for utilities

Context

Appa Systems is a company in stealth working to radically reimagine how utilities plan, troubleshoot, and run scenario analysis on the modern day challenges of an electrical grid, ranging from extreme weather demands to solar panels to increased adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs).

Impact

As the first product help for this early stage start-up, I worked with the founding CEO and CTO to translate their extensive user research into a high-fidelity MVP that they could send to stakeholders and convert their first utility customers. We performed a 1-month design sprint, iterating at extreme cycles to move from a lofi version with feature agreement to a high-fidelity MVP that was shopped around to help convert the first pilot programs.


Please contact me with any inquiries about this project. All data is notional and mocks shown here are representational.

The tool uses proprietary technology to create simulations of electrical grid demand under different cases, and also identify areas where potentially grid-damaging voltage violations could occur.

Appa allows users to configure profiles of the electrical demand on parts of the grid and simulate the impacts, useful for studying cases from extreme weather to increased demand due to electrical vehicles and more.