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Leafully Wins Green Button Apps Contest

2012-05-22T20:28:58+00:00

If you were to ask 100 people to define a kilowatt-hour, you'd probably get some blank stares and a few interesting answers. If you asked 100 people to define a tree, you would get slightly varying answers, but essentially the same answer.

That is the idea behind Leafully, which just walked away with the grand prize and $30,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy's Apps for Energy contest.

The app links with your Facebook profile and gives energy usage in terms of trees, which is a more meaningful term to the average person than a kilowatt-hour. It also offers an overview of energy usage, trends, a calculator and ways to save.

Leafully, like many other apps, looks at baseload power, which it calls “sleeping energy,” as well as peak power. The app translates energy use into number of trees saved, but studies have shown that only a portion of the population is motivated by environmental concerns when it comes to energy savings.

Even if the winner focused on trees instead of dollars, the power of apps overall should not be underestimated, according to Todd Park, U.S. chief technology officer. He told the utilities present at ConnectivityWeek 2012 in Santa Clara, Calif. to “embrace the power of the crowd” for more rapid innovation.

The Green Button, which was announced last fall, is a feature that allows residential and commercial customers to download detailed energy-use information in a standardized format to better manage electricity consumption and cost. Approximately 30 million utility customers will have access to Green Button data by the end of this year.

More than 50 apps competed for the prizes, covering everything from assessing rooftop solar PV for your home to small business energy management applications.

The second place prize of $15,000 went to Melon Power, which was the only company to leverage Green Button data to make it easy for commercial buildings to get an Energy Star benchmark score, a process that is mandatory in various cities and states.

“We were wowed and very impressed,” by Melon Power's app, said Karen Austin, chief information officer and senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric, which was one of the sponsors of the contest. “The dozens of apps we received through the contest are just what our customers are asking for: automation, self-service and mobility when it comes to helping manage their energy.”

Third prize went to VELObill, which allows customers to view their utility usage and measure whether it is high or low compared to peers and to find ways to save money. An app that simply makes the utility bill itself more understandable is badly needed, especially when you consider that most bills don't even explain their terms.

The student winners came from University of California, Irvine with the Wotz application, which uses a landscape picture to show baseload and regular energy use. It breaks this data down into everything from MacBook Air charges to cheeseburgers, and also has challenges, including a Tetris-inspired game.

In a separate contest, Benchmarx won the Biggest Energy Saver Apps Developer contest, which was sponsored by Oncor, CenterPoint Energy, Grid21, Landis+Gyr, Itron, GE, IBM and Tendril.

Benchmarx's original application was for the commercial sector, to help companies understand energy use and comply with benchmarking. The company tailored its software for the residential experience and won $50,000 in the contest.

Although the bulk of the apps' functionality aren't new to people who work in the smart grid space, they will be novel to the masses. “It's one thing to say consumers have the access, but it's more powerful for a customer to empower third parties,” said Larsh Johnson, CTO of eMeter (now part of Siemens), which supports Green Button but was not involved in the apps contest. “It will be very novel to consumers who haven't thought about it. Consumers are going to be able to have choices.”

AlertMe Rolls Out Home Energy Analytics, Advice in the UK

2012-05-22T07:00:09+00:00

AlertMe, the U.K. startup that got its start in wireless gadgets to automate home security and energy savings, is now bringing its software expertise to the fore with a new program with big customer and strategic partner British Gas. Looks like we’ve got another company that wants to marry big data analytics with the flood of energy information coming from the smart grid.

The rollout announced Tuesday will see AlertMe distribute its “Personalized Energy Efficiency Advice Service” to smart meter-enabled customers of the giant U.K. utility. The service, which crunches masses of smart meter data and delivers customers energy usage and pricing info, along with tips for energy saving, has started with a 10,000-customer pilot, but is set to be expanded to more smart-metered British Gas customers in the fall.

AlertMe isn’t ditching its ZigBee-connected home security and automation gadgets, David Bercovich, AlertMe’s vice president of North America, said in an interview. Rather, the new project “shows the value of the platform we built, and specifically that we are about insights and analytics, as well as controls,” he said.

In short, AlertMe is seeking to provide a service similar to that being delivered to utility customers by U.S.-based startups like Opower, Efficiency 2.0, Tendril and others. To be sure, 10,000 homes isn’t a lot compared to the tens of millions of Opower customers getting energy reports today. But British Gas is already deploying millions of meters to its customers, which opens up a large set of customers to AlertMe's service. Eventually, it could expect to reach all 16 million of British Gas' customer accounts by 2020, when government mandates call for the entire nation to be smart metered.

The concept relies less on giving each homeowner a view of their real-time data via expensive sensors and monitors, and more on pulling data from utility back-office systems and presenting it to customers via channels they already have -- say, a smart phone or a desktop PC.

Smart meters aren’t critical to this kind of data analytics and customer presentment model, though they help by providing more detailed data in shorter time increments.

What is critical, however, is that the homes involved are linked via some sort of platform that can manage the interplay of back-office data and in-home presentment in a smooth and seamless manner. That can be done from the home via a piece of hardware, or it can be done remotely, over the cloud.

British Gas already uses AlertMe’s cloud platform and home gadgets in various home automation pilot projects. The startup has been working with the 16-million-customer utility since 2009, and landed a strategic investment from it in 2010. Bercovich said that AlertMe’s platform is “deeply embedded” with British Gas, much in the way that rival U.K. home energy startup Onzo has given strategic investor Scottish and Southern Energy the rights to distribute its products in the U.K. and Ireland.

The deregulated U.K. power market allows utility customers to switch retail electricity and gas providers as often as every month. That makes home automation, energy tip sheets, smart meter data delivery and other such services potential customer retention tools, as well as ways to drive energy efficiency and meet regulatory mandates, Bercovich noted. (Deregulated U.S. markets like Texas may also be fertile ground for early adoption of customer-facing energy analysis and control services like these.)

AlertMe announced in January that it was supplying its cloud platform to Lowe’s for the big-box retailer’s upcoming home automation offering, giving it a chance to prove whether it can grab customers’ attention in the home improvement retail market as well.

AlertMe isn’t just looking at big-box retailers and utilities for partners. It’s also seeking telecommunications companies interested in selling home automation as an add-on to home phone, cable or internet services. So far, it has announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom, but it has a lot of competitors in this space, such as EcoFactor and its project with Comcast, iControl’s project with Time Warner Cable, or Verizon’s home automation offering with Motorola and its home automation acquisition 4Home.

AlertMe is also working on technology that can disaggregate individual household loads like heating, lighting and appliances without actually attaching sensors to the circuits that serve them, Bercovich said. We’ve seen a few similar technologies emerge with similar promises, including fellow U.K. startup Navetas, which just landed smart meter giant Sensus as an investor and strategic partner.

AlertMe raised £5 million ($10.35 million) in 2007, £8 million ($12.8 million) in 2009 and £15 million (about $24 million) in 2010, bringing the company’s total investment to roughly $49 million to date. That puts it behind Opower, which has raised about $64 million, and Tendril, which has raised about $100 million.

One big question for all these startups and their partners is, how good are they at actually engaging homeowners to take action to save energy? We’ve seen numbers that range from Opower’s solid 2 percent to 4 percent reductions in energy use via its mailed monthly reports, to energy reductions in the 20 percent to 30 percent range for price-sensitive home energy automation pilots.

Another big question is, do the people who buy these systems even care about their energy data? While AlertMe, iControl and other startups include energy management as one function, it’s the door locks, security cameras and other automation gear that has mainly grabbed customers’ attention so far. How data analytics and customer engagement might change that dynamic is anyone’s guess.

A New Smart Grid Powerhouse: Eaton Acquires Cooper Industries

2012-05-21T18:06:36+00:00

Eaton Corp., the power and control systems giant, announced Monday that it would acquire Cooper Industries, a powerhouse in electric grid gear, catapulting the 90-year-old Eaton into a new class of smart grid competition.

Terms of the transaction announced Monday set a value of $72 per share of Cooper stock in cash and shares in the new company, for an equity value of $11.8 billion, one of the biggest M&A deals of the year so far. Eaton has secured a $6.75 billion bridge financing commitment from Morgan Stanley and Citibank to finance the cash portion of the acquisition.

The combined companies had a collective $21.5 billion in 2011 revenues, according to Monday's statement. GTM Research analyst Ben Kellison estimates the combined companies will rank sixth in smart grid-related revenues amongst grid and power giants like Siemens, Schneider Electric, General Electric, Alstom and ABB/Ventyx.

The deal, to close in the second half of 2012, will create a company headquartered in Ireland and tentatively titled “Eaton Global Corporation Plc or a variant thereof ('New Eaton'),” according to Monday’s announcement. Eaton’s CEO and chairman Alexander Cutler will lead it.

Cleveland, Ohio-based Eaton reported 2011 sales of $16 billion globally, and its portfolio includes data center and building controls, vehicle drivetrains, power distribution and control gear and hydraulics and pneumatic systems for commercial and military use. It's a major player in plug-in vehicle charging, where it faces a familar set of competitors like Siemens, Schneider, GE and ABB.

On the smart grid side, it has everything from substation and distribution automation turnkey systems to its smart home and smart building products and services, which put it in competition with the likes of Honeywell and Johnson Controls. Cooper offers Eaton “diversified component brands, global reach and international distribution” to expand its reach, Cutler said in Monday’s announcement.

The two expected the deal to increase operating earnings by share by 35 cents in 2014 and 45 cents in 2015, as well as create about $535 million in “annual synergies” by 2016 via business consolidation. Shares of Cooper (CBE) had jumped 26 percent to $70.39 in Monday morning trading, while Eaton (ETN) shares were up slightly, less than 1 percent.

Of course, any measure of Eaton and Cooper's new clout in the market should be judged against the future acquisitions amongst its chief competitors. ABB has earmarked $9 billion to $18 billion for acquisitions over the next five years, and most recently bought North American power equipment giant Thomas & Betts for $3.9 billion. GE and Schneider have spent billions on acquisitions, and Siemens has upped its ante with its purchase of eMeter in December and RuggedCom in February.

With Nuke Plants Offline, California Faces a Summer Without SONGS

2012-05-18T12:00:21+00:00

If, as currently predicted, Southern California Edison is unable to get its 2,200-megawatt San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) back in service in time for the heat of the summer, California’s power generation and delivery system will be profoundly tested.

“An extended outage of both SONGS units may create local reliability issues during heat waves for San Diego and parts of south Orange County,” the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) said. “Parts of the grid serving the Los Angeles Basin may also be stressed during high demand periods.”

To meet Southern California’s demand for electricity without hamstringing its economy, the ISO is making plans that will put into action idled power plants, new transmission, the state’s best practices, renewables and cutting edge grid tools.

“Southern California Edison’s four replacement steam generators at their San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station failed in less than two years of operation, while the original equipment operated for 28 years,” noted a just-released Fairewinds/Friends of the Earth report.

SCE has, according to the Fairewinds report, acknowledged replacing the steam generators as “a strategic decision to avoid a more thorough license amendment and review process” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The right solution to the vibration problem that led to the shutdown, according to Fairewinds, requires “major modifications with repair and outage time that could last more than eighteen months if Edison and Mitsubishi are even able to repair these faulty designed steam generators,” adding, “the safest long-term action is the replacement of the San Onofre steam generators.”

While SCE continues to work with the NRC to bring SONGS back, the ISO is working to minimize impacts.

“We are not the safety experts. That’s the NRC,” said ISO Director of Communications and Public Relations Stephanie McCorkle. “Our job is to plan.”

The ISO is, McCorkle noted, doing “contingency planning in coordination with the Governor’s office, state energy agencies, federal officials and the utilities [because the loss of SONGS] reduces local electricity supply and the ability of the high voltage grid to import power into the region that already has limited transmission lines.”

McCorkle was blunt. Without contingency planning and mitigation of that 2,200-megawatt loss, she said, “We would be in the hole.”

The focus of the ISO’s planning has been two gas-fired power plant units previously closed as a result of the state’s efforts to clean up its power supply and two under-construction transmission lines.

The ISO considered it “absolutely critical to get units three and four at the Huntington Beach Power Plant available for dispatch, and that was done as of Friday,” McCorkle said.

“The Huntington Beach units not only add 452 megawatts of capacity in the LA Basin,” the ISO reported, “but also enable 350 megawatts of additional imported power to transfer into San Diego.”

Bringing these units back will cost SCE and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) $2.5 million per month. Air quality regulators have permitted their service through November 1.

Completing the Sunrise Powerlink and Barre-Ellis transmission lines on schedule in June, before the summer’s peak demand hits, McCorkle said, will “strengthen the transmission system in general and allow us to import more power from the Southwest.”

Without these mitigations, McCorkle said, the LA Basin would be short 240 megawatts on a high-demand, hot day and the San Diego area would be short 337 megawatts. With them, she said, we only have reserve margins of thirteen megawatts in San Diego and of 212 megawatts in the LA Basin.

The ISO has also secured $9 million in funding from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), McCorkle said, to reactivate its Flex Alert conservation campaign. Radio and TV ads will begin appearing in late June that will teach consumers conservation measures for Southern California’s 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. “air conditioner rush hour,” when load is most likely to exceed ISO capacity.

Finally, McCorkle said, the ISO and the utilities are “encouraging more participation in local voluntary demand response (DR) programs.” As a result, recent SCE and SDG&E smart meter programs may pay off sooner and bigger than expected in heading off rolling power outages.

“Because SDG&E has 100 percent smart meter penetration,” McCorkle said, “it can track how much customers are cutting back.” Customers who conserve will, for the first time in California, be compensated without having to enroll in a program. It is “a way for people to respond and be compensated,” she explained. And conserved energy, she added, “is counted like any other resource. This is where people power is going to pay off.”

The ISO is also, McCorkle said, “analyzing the potential long-term implications of being without the San Onofre units.” Its conclusion, she said, is “there aren’t adequate resources to replace San Onofre permanently. We’re just trying to fill the holes as best we can."

from the ISO&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s last Flex Your Power campaign

This video was part of the ISO's last Flex Your Power campaign.

Green Button Apps: How Innovative Are They?

2012-05-17T17:15:41+00:00

A tsunami of Green Button applications is coming to an iPad, Android phone or computer near you, if you happen to be one of the 30 million or so Americans who has a utility that supports the Green Button initiative.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a total of $100,000 up for grabs for the developers of some of the best apps, which will be judged in the coming weeks by a team of experts.

One of the prizes is a popularity contest based on which app can get the most votes online. There are 55 apps in total, covering everything from assessing rooftop solar PV for your home to small business energy management applications.

There is a range of applications, but there is also an overwhelming amount of overlap. The bulk of the apps allow people to upload their Green Button data to the application and view it in some shiny graph format. A lot of the functionalities, such as getting an alert if your bill or energy use goes over a certain threshold, are increasingly being offered directly through utilities. Also, it is important to note that the apps that are entered into the contest are not the entire suite of apps that leverage Green Button data.

Most apps in the contest allow people to track overall usage, but a handful are focused squarely on vampire power, a term for energy use caused by appliances that are sucking standby power when they’re not in use. RemindMeGreen is an app that sends you a reminder to shut things down totally when they’re not in use. There’s also the literally named Exploring Background Energy Use that does just that.

Looking into appliance energy use is a steady focus of many of the apps, and while it might be interesting to some people, it is vastly overrated. Few of these apps, in their current iteration, seem to link to current rebates through governments and utilities allowing people to replace their energy-sucking appliances. Also, newer appliances just aren't the energy hogs they used to be.

Plus, you’re just not going to turn your refrigerator off at night. Knowing your refrigerator is using twice as much energy as it’s meant to is helpful, but just knowing how much energy your refrigerator is using is less helpful.

Many of the savviest energy management companies have learned the hard way what many of these app developers have missed: few people care about crunching their energy data. People will engage a few times to get a little insight, then they’re not coming back.

A question that could have maybe been asked more often when developing some of the apps is, “Who cares?” Does your mother care about this stuff? The average college kid? Your grandmother? Who pays the electricity bill? Who is this app for? Who has time for this?

Give ‘Em Something They Can Use

Generally speaking, people don’t like their utility or thinking about their utility usage. What people do like, though, is control. And there are some apps in the contest that offer that.

Schneider Electric’s Wiser app allows homeowners to control their Wiser thermostat and smart plugs, along with the ability to see their energy usage. WattCafe brings in weather data and provides detailed information on how to best set your AC to save money.

Other apps also leveraged weather data. One such example is Energy Forecaster, which lets people see how much energy or money they can save for lowering or raising their AC settings. However, the app relies too heavily on kilowatt-hours, a metric which means nothing to the average person.

Then there is a suite of evaluation apps for electric vehicles or rooftop solar. Some other apps integrate tracking and monitoring with helping a person evaluate if an EV or solar is right for his or her lifestyle. While the apps could be helpful, the question remains whether people are searching for an app to evaluate rooftop solar or buying an EV.

Building on the success of Efficiency 2.0, which was recently acquired, there are also a handful of apps that leverage rewards or points for energy saved. And of course, there are various competition apps, or competition is built into some of the more general apps.

In one of the boldest proclamations of the contest, Urbien Energy Referee assures users that “No one says you can’t save the world while destroying your friends’ self-esteem at the same time.” Good to know.

Novel Apps Peek Through

A few apps took a totally different approach. Watt@Home leverages Foursquare to build a profile of when you’re home and away to help you understand vampire power. Obviously it’s focused on the set of people that check in every time they get home, which leaves out a vast swath of the population (read: people over 30.)

VELObill looks to replace the utility bill experience, a worthy goal indeed. It is one of the few apps that clearly states that it will help people find the cost and payback of energy efficiency upgrades and then link you to a local contractor. How the contractors are vetted, however, is not clear from first glance at the app.

Peaktweak allows users to understand their peak usage and see where they can shift use. The app is useful in places where people might be considering peak pricing plans, but those places are still few and far between, so this app is likely ahead of its time.

Melon Power belongs to a group of apps that is zeroing in on small and medium commercial – an untapped market that could benefit the most from Green Button. Melon Power offers Energy Star benchmarking, the only app of its kind in the contest.

But there are other small business apps, including BEST application, eEnergy Manager, Power Drop, Watt Ease and GEMS, the latter of which can help businesses evaluate energy efficiency upgrades and track energy use. The small business apps are some of the most focused on actionable information, rather than just presenting data.

The apps are just the beginning of what will be available for Green Button. What is missing from the competition are the most active players in the space that are already supporting Green Button, including Opower, Tendril, eMeter and Aclara.

Although the applications aren’t incredibly novel, considering what’s already in the marketplace, they show the various ways to skin a cat. There will be more than one way to provide a basic level of insight for the average consumer, but information is truly just one piece of the puzzle. The best apps will make people's lives easier, and maybe save some money at the same time.

Apparently, the energy apps that completely knock our socks off are still off in the future.

Gen110, Energy “Concierge” to the Solar Household, Gets Funding From KP

2012-05-17T04:00:31+00:00

Third-party-financed residential solar -- offering homeowners rooftop solar at no cost, then reaping the benefits of tax incentives and economies of scale -- is all the rage these days. California saw third-party solar outpace homeowner-owned solar for the first time last year, with contenders like SolarCity, SunRun, Sungevity, Clean Power Finance, OneRoof Energy, and others vying for the new market.

It appears that cheaper power bills for little or no money down is an attractive offer for many homeowners. But could new approaches open the market up even further?

Gen110, a San Francisco startup with 70 employees, 11 offices in California and about 2,000 customers for its solar-backed energy bill reduction service, says yes -- if you can pick out the right customers. On Thursday, Gen110 announced an investment of undisclosed size from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to expand its “energy concierge” concept to broader markets, along with unspecified “business development support” from the big green venture capital firm.

It also announced that it will be using SunPower panels, and SunPower's financing program, in projects in California's Central Valley, adding the high-efficiency PV maker to a list of partners that includes solar financing startup SunRun and roofing and solar installer PetersenDean.

The startup works with solar installers, developers and financiers on the customer engagement side of the business, from picking out the right customers to target to getting them to sign up for a long-term relationship to lower their energy bills, CEO Jason Brown said in a Wednesday interview.

“We’re not a solar company; we’re a distributed energy company,” he said. Gen110 has partnered with big third-party solar players, but it’s also looking at future applications of on-site combined heat and power systems, energy storage and other technologies that could provide homeowners their own power, Brown said.

That’s because Gen110’s main relationship with its customers is as an energy services company of sorts, he said. The startup’s core IP resides in analyzing the world of potential customers in a market -- in this case, California -- and picking out those that pay higher bills. Those are typically owners of larger homes, though Brown said there’s a mass market for the service as well, as long as you pay about $120 or more per month for electricity.

From there, Gen110 hits those customers with a marketing and customer service experience that includes home visits to lay out just how a no-cost solar array -- whether via a power purchase agreement, financing plan, lease or another structure -- could reduce the customer’s power bills, not just today but in the future, he said.

These customers represent fresh markets for the solar industry, which has depended so far on targeting so-called “green” adopters, rather than doing market analysis to identify economic needs, Brown said. He wouldn’t provide much more in the way of details on the “big data” analysis that goes into this process, saying that it’s a core part of Gen110’s intellectual property.

Gen110 makes money via revenue-sharing agreements with its partners, Brown said. That could include energy efficiency service providers and others interested in ways to isolate and target customers who stand to see the most economic benefit in being sold a third-party-financed project or system, he noted.

Typical savings add up to about $50,000 over 20 years, he said. But while some customers want to get involved in how much they’re saving, a good deal of them just want to get a cheaper, fixed rate for power and leave the rest in Gen110’s hands, he said. The startup is concentrating on California right now, though Brown said it could expand to other states and regions.

Just how Gen110’s offering will fit into the ecosystem of third-party solar developers remains to be seen. Flagship third-party solar startup SolarCity, which took the top spot for U.S. residential solar market installation in the first nine months of 2011, certainly spends a lot of money targeting and marketing, and so do its competitors. The proof in the concept will no doubt lie in whether or not Gen110 can land more partners like SunPower to use it.

Clean Clothes and Dishes for a Fraction of the Energy

2012-05-16T20:00:15+00:00

Standards -- they’re so boring yet so essential. That is true in every industry, and particularly for energy-intensive products.

Just ten years ago, a clothes washer used double the amount of energy it does today. In the coming years, that figure will again be slashed again, thanks to the new standards released on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The new standards for clothes washers and dishwashers will save consumers an estimated $10 billion in energy and water costs. It has taken years for them to be finalized; it was nearly two years ago that industry groups released final recommendations on the standards. The announcement adds to the nearly 40 different products the Obama administration has updated standards on, along with heavy- and light-duty vehicles.

"Working with consumer, industry and environmental groups to develop common-sense energy-saving appliance standards is an important part of the Obama administration's all-of-the-above approach to American energy and the Energy Department's efforts to reduce energy costs for consumers," DOE Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

The standards for clothes washers will go into place in 2015 and dishwasher standards will take effect in 2013. For clothes washers, the new front-loading models will use 15 percent less energy and 35 percent less water, while top-loaders will use one-third less energy and 19 percent less water. The savings will add up to $400 to $600 over the lifetime of the clothes washer, and about $100 for the dishwashers, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

Some appliances, such as dishwashers, have already become so efficient that updating the standard is important, but there is diminishing savings that can be gained.

“Clothes washers will save households as much as 10,000 gallons of water -- the equivalent of taking 250 baths -- every year under these new standards,” Ed Osann, NRDC senior policy analyst, said in a statement. “That’s good news for consumers, our environment and our economy -- and especially for anybody with a houseful of kids.”

The DOE also made changes to the ratings methods by changing the way the tests are conducted. There is now more of a balance between getting accurate results in the lab and testing the products as they might be used in the real world.

For clothes washers, for instance, they have reduced the average number of loads per year as households have grown smaller over the decades and the machine size has increased, according to Andrew deLaski of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project at the ACEEE.

The new tests will also measure for standby power, which has to be 0.08 watts or lower when the products aren’t in use.

Of course, as appliances grow more efficient, the energy hogs in the house (after heating and cooling, that is) continues to be consumer electronics, like televisions and set-top boxes. “There’s been a lot of progress, but there’s more potential,” said deLaski.

Earlier this year, the ACEEE found that appliance standards across commercial and residential sectors could save $1 trillion by 2035 and more than 200 quads of energy. Standards are coming or are being updated for some of the biggest offenders, like set-top boxes, computers and streetlights.

Even with the advancements, it’s a slow roll. Once the standards are put in place, it takes about 14 years for the products to replace older appliances in the home, although items like computers have a shorter lifespan. In the meantime, utilities are just starting to develop residential demand response programs that use either a carrot or stick to encourage people to shift their load to other times of the day. Advancing standards and increasing control features also mean that there is less need for appliances to talk to the grid, at least in the home. If HVAC systems are smart and connected, and appliances are super-efficient, it becomes less important for the latter to be grid-connected.

The good news for utilities is that updated standards can drive down peak demand in homes and businesses overall, although there is always a new technology on the horizon waiting to be plugged in.

Opower Adds Utility Customers, Tests Smart Thermostats

2012-05-16T19:30:38+00:00

Opower, the energy management startup with the lead in U.S. utility deployments, had just expanded again. On Tuesday, it announced 15 new utility customers, bringing its list to 75 total, and six new expansions with existing customers like NSTAR and Consumers Energy.

Looks as if the Arlington, Va.-based startup with about $64 million in venture capital investment is cementing its lead as the startup to beat in the field of connecting utility customers to their energy use and efficiency options. Last week, it announced it had reached its goal of 1 terawatt-hour of energy saved for its customers.

Competitors include Boulder, Colo.-based Tendril, which has more than 30 utility pilot customers (and a few full-scale rollouts coming this year), and Aclara, whose customer web portal now runs at about 20 utilities across the U.S. Canadian startup Energate partners with Silver Spring Networks and is also reaching millions of homes in Ontario province. Efficiency 2.0, a startup with software to get homeowners to save energy via coupon giveaways and contests, was bought by C3 earlier this month.

All of these contenders are facing a slow-to-develop market for their services, of course. Most homeowners aren’t willing to spend more than $50 or so, if anything at all, to better manage their energy use. Utility pilots are struggling to prove they’re worth their cost in terms of efficiencies and customer payback.

Still, Michael Sachse, vice president of regulatory affairs for Opower, told me that utilities are typically doubling their deployments when they expand, or even better -- National Grid has scaled from 100,000 to 650,000 homes in the New England region, and is adding web services to Opower’s core paper-mail reports, he noted.

Beyond growing its core business, Opower’s been up to a few more things in the past few months. First of all, it’s moving outside the United States. Opower launched a pilot project with U.K. utility First Utility last year, and earlier this month added web services to the list. Sachse told me Opower was working on up to three additional projects outside the United States, though he wouldn’t provide details.

Second, it’s starting to ramp up its intriguing smart thermostat project with Honeywell. The two now have about 1,000 homes testing out Honeywell’s Wi-Fi smart thermostats and cloud platform running Opower’s customer management and data analysis software, Sachse said, though once again, he wouldn’t provide more details.

That’s going to be a closely watched project, since it combines a giant in the thermostat field (and one that’s proven it’s willing to go after the competition with lawsuits) with a startup that’s gained a lot of traction in the business of getting customers to save energy. Opower’s mailed reports have been able to yield 2 percent to 4 percent reductions in energy use across the 35 million or so households it serves.

That figure is respectable, but it’s still a lot lower than what you can get with a smart thermostat that turns off when you leave the house and other such automated energy-saving features. Those can push efficiency gains into the 20 percent range or greater, which is what Opower is aiming at with Honeywell, and other competitors are claiming as well.

As for market share, it’s important to note that while Opower analyzes data from about 35 million households (7.4 million from these new customers), its web portal users number only about 10 million, and “active” users of the mail, email, text and website channels that Opower provides only number about 4.5 million.

There’s a simple reason for this: most people don’t care enough about their energy bills to do anything about them, a fact that’s borne out by competitors as well. Aclara, for example, has about 8 million utility customers with Web portals delivering them Green Button data, but only about 1 million of those customers actively engage with their portals today. Getting more people to sign up for active, online participation with their energy use is the next step for startups and utilities.

WeatherBug Debuts Its Energy Management App

2012-05-16T17:38:02+00:00

The mercury has just started to rise across the country, but utilities and system operators have already started to plan to cut down on peak demand.

In Texas, this summer is expected to be nearly as hot as last summer, when excessive temperatures led to record-breaking energy use.

To combat the weather, CenterPoint has turned to a company that knows a little something about weather: Earth Networks, which owns WeatherBug.

WeatherBug first launched its Smart Grid Solutions in 2010, but there hasn’t been much noise since then. Earth Networks, which has teamed up with EnergyHub, has just released the first offering of its e5 program. The program will be made available for CenterPoint customers who are looking to save money this summer, and will also provide some demand response relief to the utility.

CenterPoint’s Houston-area customers who already have 3M wireless thermostats (which all come equipped with EnergyHub’s Mercury platform) will be able to sign up for the service for free. The first 2,500 will receive a $25 Home Depot gift card for participation. Those who don’t have 3M thermostats will be offered the devices at a 15 percent discount.

The e5 software does not displace EnergyHub’s service, but rather runs on top of it. The software leverages WeatherBug’s network of ground sensors and data from the thermostats, along with home and smart meter data to build a thermal dynamic picture of each house.

Consumers who opt in to the program pick their comfort settings so that the temperature never goes above or below the home owner’s stated parameters. The weather stations provide 29 variables, and there are another 12 variables that are taken into account for the house, including how long it takes for the sun to penetrate through the walls or how long it takes for the energy in the air to translate into thermal mass.

“We haven’t come across a house we can’t optimize yet,” said Dave Oberholzer, director of energy products and business development at Earth Networks, which has been working with the University of Maryland to refine its algorithms.

If the service sounds similar to EcoFactor, it is. One key difference is that WeatherBug’s e5 is always free for the customer and Earth Networks is leveraging its core business of weather data. Also, instead of making various micro-adjustments throughout the day, e5 is mostly concerned with hitting the right temperatures at the right time. If customers want it to be 72 degrees when they walk in the door at 5:30 p.m., e5 will ensure the house is at that temperature within one or two degrees within five minutes of the set time.

The average savings for each house is about 15 percent, although it can be as high as 30 percent, according to Oberholzer. Many of the other behavioral pushes will still come from EnergyHub’s platform. The program will deliver about 2 megawatts overall in demand reduction -- a drop in the bucket when you consider that the entire Texas power grid hit a peak of 68,294 MW last summer. The demand reduction is equal to what might be achieved from one commercial customer, although the untapped market for residential peak shaving also means this is just the tip of the iceberg.

E5 will also provide an energy scorecard to customers at the end of summer. Instead of just telling you how you compare to your neighbors overall, it will specify how your home does in areas such as wind and solar infiltration. Think of it as a rating system for the home itself. With smart meter data, it can also offer the data in terms of kilowatt-hours or dollars. “On a gross level, we can tell if you have an air infiltration problem,” said Oberholzer. But it can’t tell you which door or window is leaky. For that, homeowners will have to choose to take the next step.

The data will never be sold to third parties, but CenterPoint Energy has the opportunity to offer energy audits for homes that are underperforming.

For companies like EnergyHub and WeatherBug, the power is in numbers. As more wireless connected thermostats are in the homes, utilities can leverage those for some peak relief during summer.

WeatherBug has the added bonus of already being a destination for customers. People already use WeatherBug’s website or apps to check weather, and there is an opportunity to recruit people for demand response programs, or at least get them thinking about energy use, via those platforms. For Houston-area residents, they will see call-outs for the CenterPoint program when they visit WeatherBug. “Ultimately, working with utilities gives us a lot more leverage,” said Oberholzer. “People don’t go to the Cisco website every day.”

One Degree Can Save More Than You Think

2012-05-15T13:00:17+00:00

Smart thermostats have the ability to save homes and small businesses significant amounts of money. The secret is that people have to actually use the thermostats.

Historically, smart thermostats have been vastly underutilized. Difficult to program and easy to override, the majority of smart thermostats were set to ‘hold’ and never revisited.

That is starting to change with more novel connected thermostat programs that help people understand how their thermostat settings affect their wallets. EnergyHub’s Mercury smart thermostat platform just released data showing how Michigan consumers could save by adjusting their thermostats up or down a few degrees.

Instead of choosing a set point when you register your 3M thermostat with the Mercury platform, you don’t pick a temperature, you pick a comfort level: super efficiency, high efficiency, standard, low efficiency and very low efficiency. And if you decide that you want to push the thermostat up in winter, or down in summer, the system -- whether online or a mobile app -- will tell you how much that temperature will raise your bill, amounting to about 3 percent for each degree.

In Michigan, however, the savings for people using the EPA default set point of 64 degrees came out to be a 5.4 percent reduction in heating cost per degree compared to the state average, which works out to be about a savings of $30 per month for three degrees.

Of course, winter doesn’t use nearly the same electricity as summer, when cooling is powered by electricity. In Michigan, most heating is natural gas, but “many Michigan customers pay double price per kilowatt-hour over 600 kilowatt-hours/month in summer, so the savings during cooling season could be huge,” said Seth Frader-Thompson, CEO of EnergyHub.

Currently, EnergyHub’s Mercury platform is free with a 3M thermostat, but there will likely be paid services that will be layered on in the future. For the first time, this summer there will be hundreds of thousands of homes using different wireless thermostats either on their own or as part of demand response programs like the ones offered by Oklahoma Gas &Electric or TXU Energy.

Overall, growth of the home energy management sector has not been as spectacular as many had hoped, but there is steady and real growth of home energy management that started in 2011 and is expected to grow throughout 2012.

“Every state is different, obviously,” said Frader-Thompson, “but we're very excited to see what the data tells us as we get deep into summer.”