Home management has proved a vexing problem for vendors. Utilities, vendors and appliance makers all want to lower household energy consumption. But it has been a struggle to keep consumers engaged or to get them to spend the time and money to integrate an automation system. We have long argued that transactive capabilities will make the smart grid sustainable and engaging for end users. Without this, we suspect it is only a matter of time before others join the unfortunate legacy of Google’s PowerMeter, Microsoft’s Hohm, etc.
As Greentech Media reports:
Google said in a blog today that after tremendous successes in trials and great feedback from customers it is discontinuing the software/service for managing and monitoring home energy consumption. The service will formally die on September 16. Specifically, the company said:
“We first launched Google PowerMeter as a Google.org project to raise awareness about the importance of giving people access to data surrounding their energy usage. Studies show that having simple access to such information helps consumers reduce their energy use by up to 15%; of course, even broader access to this information could help reduce energy use worldwide.
“We’re pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service. PowerMeter users will have access to the tool until September 16, 2011. We have made it easy for you to download your data: simply log in to your account and go to ‘Account Settings’ to export to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. We will be contacting users directly with more information on this process.
“Momentum is building toward making energy information more readily accessible, and it’s exciting to see others drive innovation and pursue opportunities in this important new market. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished with PowerMeter and look forward to what will develop next in this space.”
Because those quotes come from a corporate blog, they do naturally sport a few notable exaggerations. The assertion that consumers will reduce their energy consumption by up to 15 percent has never really panned out in reality. It’s been a favorite of PowerPoint presentations, but the actual savings are often far lower. OPower has some of the best results for reducing energy consumption via information and on average it gets consumers to reduce consumption by 3 percent or so. EcoFactor, which automates energy management, says it reduces power by around 17 percent more than demand response services: the key to EcoFactor’s success is allowing machines, not humans, to handle many management tasks.
PowerMeter helped raise the profile of energy management, but Google was only one of many in the field.
Back in late 2009, however, PowerMeter looked like it would potentially threaten utilities and their relationships with customers, at least according to some people. Google tried to downplay any strategic plans.
“We are not trying to build a business model around it,” said Ed Lu, the former astronaut who also served as the PowerMeter overlord back then. (Lu left in 2010 to write a book.)
Well, Ed got that right.
Google, though, can hold its head high, because it lasted longer than Microsoft. In March, Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, said the company was ramping down Hohm, its home management project, to concentrate on commercial office space.
Home management has proved a vexing problem for vendors. Utilities, vendors and appliance makers all want to lower household energy consumption. But it has been a struggle to keep consumers engaged or to get them to spend the time and money to integrate an automation system. (See “Is HAN Hosed?”)
A second article considers some reasons why the PowerMeter may have failed:
Google officially shuttered its web energy tool PowerMeter Friday after the application failed to bring in enough users. For those who have watched PowerMeter’s slow slog over its two-year lifespan, the move to kill it isn’t all that shocking. But the application, which enabled people to monitor and manage their home energy consumption, does have an important legacy as one of the first examples of how the Internet and broadband will change the way people consume energy.
Here are some of the reasons why I think PowerMeter didn’t take off:
1. It’s early. The market for energy management tools is still in a really early stage. Consumers are largely unaware of the tools and technologies available to monitor and manage their own energy. The Consumer Electronics Association found that 64 percent of consumers are unaware of electricity management programs, and 66 percent of consumers aren’t familiar with the smart grid. Google launched its PowerMeter tool in early 2009, when very few smart meters and smart grid network deployments had been installed in the U.S.
2. Opt-in, not opt-out. In this early stage of the market, it seems like programs that are opt-out (sent unless the customer says they don’t want it), not opt-in (only sent if the customer wants it), are the ones working. OPower has been successful largely because it connected with utilities early on, and OPower’s detailed energy bills and energy savings recommendations, are delivered to utility customers automatically. A utility is one of a few types of companies that can send its customers this type of information without getting an opt-in agreement, and the mailed OPower energy bills have a very high open rate, because they look just like a utility energy bill.
In comparison, utilities that agreed to participate with Google’s PowerMeter tool (like San Diego Gas & Electric) didn’t seem to be offering Google PowerMeter as an opt-out tool, or else the tool would have had a lot bigger userbase than it reportedly did. SDG&E had 11,000 customers using it, and is reportedly building its own tool.
3. Utility friend or foe? Since Google first launched PowerMeter, some utilities saw the tool as a threat to the relationship they have with their customers. Google’s brand is a whole lot bigger and more consumer-friendly than utilities, and Google has often jumped into industries and sought to disrupt them — from mobile with Android, to city-wide wireless with its Wi-Fi project (clearly with varying success).
At the same time, when Google first launched PowerMeter, it focused on connecting with data from smart meters, then later opened its API and connected with gadget makers to circumvent smart meters. Smart meters were in a very early stage then (and relatively still are), and are the end devices for utilities (utilities are behind their installments). I think this place in the middle ground was an awkward position, where they were originally dependent on utility relationships, but weren’t all that good at securing those relationships.
4. Direct to consumer. Perhaps Google would have been better served if it created PowerMeter to go directly to the consumer originally, but did it in its own algorithm-focused way. Earth Aid, for example, uses algorithms to take utility data straight from an online utility account if the consumer gives Earth Aid permission to link that account to its system, and Earth Aid doesn’t need utility partnerships. While Earth Aid also only had “tens of thousands of households actively using the Earth Aid beta,” as of February, this approach seems like it would be a more natural move by Google.
5. Google isn’t an energy company. Google didn’t ever really market PowerMeter, and PowerMeter came out of its philanthropic arm Google.org. It was an experiment, and one that didn’t work. Despite the amount of funding Google has been putting into clean power, Google isn’t an energy supplier or manager at heart. In contrast, OPower has raised over $50 million to invest in its energy management services. Google made a decision that it would only put a certain amount of resources and funding into PowerMeter, and beyond that, Google would pull back. Could Google have ironed out any kinks and raised the tool’s profile if it put more resources into PowerMeter? Google doesn’t care to find out — because energy isn’t at the core of what it does
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