Understanding and Connecting Smart Meters, Smart Grids, and Smart Markets.
- Lynne Kiesling
October 21st, 2011
Much has been written about gamification and Facebook’s recent foray. As longtime readers of this blog will note, we are skeptical of the ability of such to engage users and motivate behavior change over the long run but, to be fair, let’s review three more relevant articles. The market has been anticipating a substantial social media effort around energy efficiency and fighting climate change for years, and we agree that if a social energy app can take off and actually engage users, it could be a tipping point for getting people to change their energy consumption habits. But, absent a compelling value proposition, we are not sure if the current stable of applications will actually become popular enough for Facebook to do for energy efficiency, what it’s done for social gaming apps. Here are few other views:
The first, courtesy of The Energy Collective, does not discuss games per se, but rather reminds us to think back to the day of deregulation in telephony and what we can learn about consumers’ interests and behaviors through this:
“…If you think about it, we’ve gone through most of the 20th century without consumers being aware of the electricity system at all, including me before I started in this. Most people just switch the lights on, the lights come on, they pay the bills and occasionally you get a blackout and that’s kind of it. So in the last few years, the industry has been saying that we need consumers to understand energy consumption and the cost of energy, which is valid, companies like Google spent a lot of their effort on energy literacy, which is a term I find quite intriguing. So there’s a lot of that, and it obviously needs to be done. So we’re in that phase right now of trying to educate consumers as to how they use energy and how it can be done better. What’s really strange to me is that eventually, I don’t know 10 or 20 years time, it should really go back to how it was in the 20th century- the light just comes on. The whole notion that consumers will be spending hours of the day looking at energy prices and changing their behavior accordingly … I don’t think it’s going to fly.
This is a transitional time period until all the elements of smartgrid are in place- and we don’t know how many years it will be until we get there- then the ultimate design of the smartgrid is that it will self automated and us humans will just consume.
We’re almost making it difficult right now for consumers… we’re telling them they need to understand it, but ultimately they probably won’t. You can see that in what happened with telecoms. If you went back to 1960-1970, they used to pay a lot for phone service, but it was simple. In the 70s and 80s with the deregulation, we got all the good stuff it brings but it made life really, really complicated in the 90s with multiple long distance or local options, MCI, calling-cards, that kind of stuff. And here we are today when $19.99 gets you a MagicJack with unlimited calling, so life becomes simple again. It’s likely electricity is going through the same transition, and we’re in the complicated period.
The second, via GigaOm, points out the
“…While there’s a good number of green and energy-focused Facebook apps out there, here comes one that looks like it could be a game changer. Energy software startup Opower, in partnership with Facebook and the environmentalists at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), plan to launch a Facebook social energy application next year that will enable users to check out their energy usage compared to friends and national averages and get other energy efficiency tips. The group says they think it could be “the world’s largest social energy community.”
The idea is to use the power of social networking, gaming and competition to get users engaged with ways to reduce their energy consumption. Think if a Facebook could app could bring the social power of Farmville to home energy management.
However, if you remember Microsoft and Google both launched similar types of applications (Hohm and PowerMeter), and then ended up killing them off after about two years for a variety of reasons. Developing an effective tool is difficult. Two reasons that these other apps didn’t work is that utilities weren’t convinced to participate (and without utility data the apps weren’t very helpful), and consumers also never really embraced the tools. Will Facebook be able to overcome consumer apathy and slow moving utilities?
Well, bringing Opower onboard will be key to bringing in the utilities. Opower already has 60 utility deals, and the Facebook social energy app will have data from utilities Commonwealth Edison, the City of Palo Alto, and Glendale Water & Power when it launches (other utilities partnerships to follow). The app doesn’t need linked utility data, but it will be more helpful and informative if your utility participates.
Users that decide to participate with the social energy app and also have a utility that is involved, will have seamless energy data uploaded and authenticated to the app, and then the user can see how their usage compares to others, and can participate in competitions and get more tips. You know, everything that all those Facebook apps are good at — keeping users constantly engaged, making the app viral, and changing user behavior. Opower has been working on behavioral analytics for years, and has been one of the only energy management startups that has gained much traction, delivering 2 percent energy reductions for its utility customers…”
The third, courtesy of GreenMonk, suggests a new application that sounds similar to the Opower/Facebook offering but with a few variants:
Energy management applications being rolled out by utility companies have a very short Mean Time to Junk Drawer (MTJD) – they are ‘all shiny’ for the first couple of weeks but the shine quickly wears off and they are soon put away in the proverbial Junk Drawer never to be opened again.
How do you make energy management applications more engaging, bringing utility company customers back again and again to try to improve on their previous energy reduction steps? You do it by turning it into a game and allowing customers to share their progress on their social network of choice!
SAP have a new application for utility customers called Smart Meter Analytics which runs on HANA. The flood of data which will be coming from Smart Meters means HANA is necessary to do meaningful analytics on Smart Meter data (Centrica talk of going from their current 70m smart meter reads per annum to 30bn when all of their smart meters are rolled out – that’s a lot of data).
Smart meters give far more granular reads on energy consumption, allowing for residential energy management applications to be built and indeed SAP’s Smart Meter Analytics application has an Energy Efficiency Scorecard for residential customers.
But, if you build an application for energy management which allows people to compete against each other. If you introduce point scoring, leaderboards, and achievement badges and add to it the ability to share your progress with your social networks (a bit like FourSquare), then the application becomes far more compelling.
Also, the mobile app would want to have a way to check energy consumption remotely, and if a device has been left on (TV, aircon, oven, etc.), remote power-down from the mobile app.
Now, for utility companies to get this to really fly, they could offer prizes to schools in their locale – the school district with the greatest energy reductions gets a new energy efficient computer lab, or new energy efficient lighting, or… (you get the idea) – pester power from the pupils in the schools on their parents, combined with educating the younger generation on the importance of energy reduction is a major win-win!
The cool thing about this is that because it is based on the utility company’s Smart Meter Analytics, it is the customer’s actual energy use, not pledges, or estimates – so reductions reported are real, and realtime.”
This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”
In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.