Pre-interview challenge for Energy & Product Engineering candidates
As part of our pre-screening process for this role, we request applicants to consider the following challenge and present their work as part of your application. This is relatively simple and publicly accessible example some of the work you’ll get involved with if you join FlatPeak.
Challenge
The challenge is to demonstrate your capability in extracting tariff information from publically available energy provider websites and transform this data
into a specific json format. This can be perform in any way you wish but must be a) automated and b) be able to run on a scheduled basis (for periodic update) without manual
intervention.
- Select an international electricity retailer (preferably not one from your home country) - Do not use the examples below for your submission
- Investigate how they present electricity tariffs to potential customer, this is typically through PDF documents, interactive web pages or other digital medium)
- Write code that automatically extract the tariff information and transforms it into the target format (feel free to use any publicly available automation tools, including AI)
- Present your work and summary of your approach (in brief bullet point format) as part of your application
Simple Example
The energy provider website will typically present tariffs in a variety of different ways, the output shows an electricity tariff that has two separate charging periods within the day. The first period, typically refered to as ‘peak’ is from 5am to midnight where they charge 31.2¢ ($0.312) per kWh and a second period, refered to as ‘off-peak’ is from midnight to 5am where they charge 9.56¢ ($0.0956) per kWh. Time and Currency is always local.
Real World Example
The Origin Energy (AU) “Origin Go Variable” Tariff can viewed via https://www.originenergy.com.au/electricity-gas/plans.html?planfuel=Elec, this example uses a random residential address in Church Point, NSW, Australia.
The tariff returned displays 3 periods, Peak 59.24 ¢/kWh, Shoulder 31.26 ¢/kWh, Off-peak 18.06 ¢/kWh which translates to the Json Output (tab). However, you will need to discover what times this Peak/Shoulder/Off-peak periods as they are not explicitly stated on the provider website but Origin does provide links to where the details can be found.
Extracting the data will require investigation and a degree of reverse engineering of the website to extract the json elements specific to the tariff information contained within the webpage (hint).
Too Easy?
Check out our Provider SDK as an additional challenge. But do get in touch with us first via jobs@flatpeak.com, we really need to speak
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