When you get your electricity bill at the end of the month, you know how much power you used but it’s very hard to figure out how you used that power.  Which appliance is being the biggest glutton for electricity?  Did switching all your light bulbs to CFLs actually make a difference?  How much did it cost you to fall asleep with the TV on last night?  To answer questions like this, we’re teaming up with internet-connected power meter creators to automatically bring home and appliance specific electricity information into your WattzOn profile.

The basic idea behind all power meters is that you plug them into an outlet and then you plug an electrical appliance into them.  This lets the device track how much power the appliance is using as the electricity passes through.  The devices we are working with then continually send this data wirelessly to an internet-connected computer so that the data can be collected and examined.

WattzOn has created a central location to present the collected information as an easy-to-explore interactive graph - to help you understand what goes into your electric bill each month. You can also get instantaneous feedback on how effective your energy saving choices (such as, say, turning off your television when you leave the room) are with regards to your personal power consumption.

Check out the first two devices that we are supporting:

ACme

WattzOn is accepting live data collected by ACme units - the same units being used in the Green Soda Project at Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  The Green Soda Project is an effort to reduce the energy consumption of Berkeley’s Soda Hall by monitoring power consumption in real-time using ACme - an open source hardware and software platform developed by Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang that enables wireless energy/power measurement and control of AC devices using a mesh network. The ACme node fills the gap between inexpensive LCD watt-meters (e.g. Kill-A-Watt) and expensive networked enterprise energy monitors.  Though you can’t get an ACme device yourself just yet, commercial versions will be available soon.  In the meantime, check out Fred’s public profile to see what his appliances are up to!  (screenshot below)

Right now, ACme devices are sending WattzOn data via the internet, and WattzOn is continuously updating Fred’s profile.  As you can see, WattzOn provides an interactive graph that allows you to zoom in on any time frame and see the electricity profile for each appliance on the network.  You can observe when the monitored appliances turn on and off and see which are contributing the most to your electricity usage.  Knowing, for example, that the PlayStation 3 uses the most power of any of your electronics is a good reason to make sure it is turned off when not in use!

Tweet-A-Watt

WattzOn also supports the Tweet-A-Watt, a Kill-a-Watt power meter modified to “tweet” the daily power consumed by the connected appliance to a Twitter account.  The creators (Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries and Phillip Torrone of  MAKE magazine) decided to make the project open-source and have published instructions online.  So, if you have a Kill-A-Watt you’d like to vivisect and you’re comfortable with a soldering iron, you can make one of these gizmos yourself using this kit!

Adafruit has 3 Tweet-A-Watts in their offices - each hooked up to a different set of electronics.  As you can see from the screenshot below, some appliances (like the computers) are always on while some (like the lab equipment/tools) are periodically used.

You can always see the latest data from Adafruit’s Tweet-A-Watts on their public profile!

DIY

These are just the first of many devices that WattzOn is linking to in order to provide our users with the most accurate tools to automatically monitor their power consumption.

But, we’re very excited to add support for any power meters you may be using or creating!  Check out our user Kelvin, who created his own type of power meter and is using our API to keep track of a whole bunch of his appliances on his WattzOn profile. (and, keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post where we interview him about his efficiency efforts!) We’re also brainstorming with the people at Wattvision and Pachube right now.  It’s our goal to get as many people working in the power meter space talking, so that we can all work together to improve the tools for home efficiency.

If you have a device that you would like us to support - or, if you’d be interested in getting one for your own home, please let us know at us [at] wattzon.com!

This is the future of personal energy monitoring - why don’t we go catch it?

I have written several posts about the Smart Grid recently, both here and on my personal blog. I got an email from a man in China today, as follows:

Hi Tom,

You are running a fabulous blog, and the discussions are rather helpful. [Ed Note: Entirely gratuitous reference to author's blog :-)]

Well, I have one question, how do you compile the curves of the electricity consumption in the last four years ? You get the historical data from your utility at a fee, or you have installed the meter yourself ? Making a day-to-day, and year-to-year data can be exhausting, but it is absolutely necessary.

{email and name}
–
Assistant Director, CEM China Team

Association of Energy Engineers CEM Program

His email was in reply to the data I have posted on how we have reduced our electrical consumption a great deal — to date more than 1/2, and at the time a bit less than that (check out the graph below).

Here’s my reply (in which I have included some links and some headers):

Samuel –

Thanks for your inquiry on my electricity reduction data as posted on my blog at FivePercent [Ed Note: entirely gratuitous self-promotion on the part of the author]

Reading Your Utility Bills

The data are from monthly bills based on meter readings, provided by my electric utility, free, as part of their service. The bills include the meter-read date, so I am able to calculate the average kWh/day for the measured month.

Our utility provides 13 months of meter data on each paper bill, and also provides historical views of bills (pdf files) going back several years, although most of the data was copied from the paper bills I had saved. The data as presented is simply a chart of the month-over-month kWh usage, compared on a year-over-year basis. This pattern was the most useful representation of the data because there is a natural pattern of electrical use in our household correlated primarily to the number of daylight hours, and secondarily to a small amount of electrical heating we do in the basement (the rest is natural gas).

Recently, the utility has begun providing the calculation of kWh/day of usage on the bill — good for other customers, since the other data provided do not normalize for the length of the billing cycle. For example, I got our bill today for the prior period and was alarmed to see a large cost compared to the previous month (for which they provide a bar chart), but then saw that the billing cycle was 34 days compared to 29 the previous month — it the end, our consumption was slightly down on a day-by-day basis.

Real-time Electrical Meters

We have installed an ancillary meter that provides near-real-time usage data via a wireless display monitor in our kitchen. Our device is designed to read data from the electricity meter at our house, using one of several possible methods, depending on the meter type (none involving smart meters). Another widely available device in the US and UK is called “The Energy Detective” or “The Owl“, which work by measuring the impedance on the incoming A/C feed. The would be much more accurate and immediate. But in neither case are these meters used to actually calculate our bill — they are just a way to get at that critical momentary data. However neither device provides a data recording mechanism, so all you can see is how much you are consuming now.

Evil, Evil Level Billing

The momentary data from the real-time meters is far, far more useful than a monthly bill, which you rightly point out is of little value to the typical electrical consumer. However, there’s a practice in the US, at least that further disguises the actual usage, known as “level billing”. Consumers who choose this method pay a fixed monthly rate based on the average consumption of the prior year. The rate is adjusted up or down based on actual consumption on a yearly basis — in effect this is a financing mechanism offered by the utilities. In reality, this further masks the cost of energy beyond the already overly-aggregated data on the monthly bill.

Smart Meters

Smart Meters are clearly superior in every respect, assuming the electric (or other energy) utility, or even an intermediate data aggregator, is able to store the data as a suitably fine level of detail (e.g. 15 minute intervals) and also provide reporting tools that allow customers to understand and visualized their energy usage, both in aggregate as well as momentary data. The Google Power Meter project aims to provide exactly this level of detail. Smart Metering takes the “exhausting” part out of the effort, while providing the “absolutely necessary” data a consumer needs to make an informed decision.

I think your comment and question is exactly the right one we need to be asking. I’ll post an anonymous version of your question and my reply on one of the blogs I post to!

WattzOn Does All the Heavy Lifting for You

And it’s worth repeating that if your electricity is from one of the supported vendors, WattzOn can do all of the exhausting dirty-work I did by hand and give you the same view. Just link your account and all the rest is gravy!

If you logged in to WattzOn today, you probably noticed that your total power footprint is significantly smaller and that your data (profile) page looks very different than last week.  We really wanted to improve the accessibility and usability of your energy consumption data - and we’ve made some changes that we think will do just that.

So, what changed?

Anarchy!

The reason that your total watts is lower is that we’ve overthrown the government! (pie slice)

This decision was partially because the government calculation algorithm was easily the most debated aspect of our methodology on our forums.  We do listen to our users’ concerns and suggestions and this is the area of the site that seemed to draw the most disagreement.

However, the main reason for this change is that we’ve decided to focus WattzOn on aspects of your lifestyle that you have direct control over. As important as we feel considering the energy the government uses on your behalf is, there is not a lot a citizen can easily do about reducing its power consumption.  At least not on a short time scale.  So, we’ve transformed your pie chart and total watts to only represent personal energy choices that you could take action to change.  Now, you have the power to reduce the wattage of each of the remaining categories by making sustainable and efficient decisions in your life.

Since we do still think the government calculation is an important metric when evaluating your country and your leaders, you can still find the number on your data page. Speaking of your data page…

Dashboard to Efficiency

As you can see below, we’ve made some pretty big design changes to your profile page to not only better display the data, but to put all of our tools at your fingertips.

From this one dashboard, you can now more easily reach the various areas of your profile.  All of the compare, visualize, and share features have been moved to a single “Explore” box so that you can quickly gain insight into the magnitude of your lifestyle energy consumption and share your results.  The dashboard clearly presents the latest from the forums and recent faceoffs to bring the community features to the forefront.  And, advanced housing features like energy bills and power meter support can be directly accessed here.

We’ll be pulling more and more into this one dashboard view over the next few weeks, so stay tuned! And, of course, please let us know if you there is something specific that you want.

We hope you find these changes as exciting as we do!

If you’re using WattzOn, you probably want to know how much energy you’re using in your life so that you can take steps to live a more sustainable lifestyle - but, you’re probably also pretty curious about how you stack up against your virtual neighbors.  To this end, we’ve added a new feature that encourages healthy competition between our users.  Now, with the “faceoff” tool, you can compare your wattage with any user with a public profile on the site!

To get started, click on the “You vs. other users” option of the “Challenge” menu on your profile page (shown below):

From there, just type in another user’s name and click “fight”!  You’ll get a graph showing a side-by-side comparison for every WattzOn category.  It’s even more fun if you add a photo to Gravatar so that your opponent can see who they’re up against!

You can also challenge people (even if they’re not on WattzOn yet) using email or Twitter (with Facebook coming really soon).  So, get on to WattzOn and start fighting!

If you want a few worthy opponents, might I suggest starting with the WattzOn team:

• Raffi
• Saul
• Jeremy
• Jessica (Me)
• Tom
• Kirk
• Jim

In my prior post, I wrote about the smart grid. Here’s a quick bit about how Smart Meters play a role. As I mentioned before, the Smart Meter provides communications to the power plant; the plant can learn if you’re getting the proper voltage, and also how much you’re using at the moment. But, this is a simplification.

As new sources of energy come online, their power can be added to the grid at any point … including power from your house. Your house may have solar panels or wind generated power sources. Indeed, if you have a hybrid or all-battery car, the power in your batteries may be used during periods of higher demand and replenished later. If you’re making more than you’re using, the whole system can adjust instantly to route that power to the most efficient destination, perhaps your next-door neighbor. Smart Meters might also allow the power company to alert you of possible problems.

Smart Meters aren’t just for electricity, either — they could accomplish the same role for gas, water and other metered services. And of course this means that no one has to come to your house to do a meter reading.

Some appliance makers are now making Smart Meter-enabled appliances. If you want your laundry dry in the morning, your dryer can ask the power company what the best time is to do the work.

Smart Meters appear to be converging on a single data-communications standard called Zigbee — there are a bunch of ways that Zigbee-enabled devices can use your Smart Meter to do cool and unexpected things. You could have a real-time meter of which appliances are using how much energy (kind of like the PowerCost Meter that I use in my house now, but much more elegant, simple, and detailed). Check out the Zigbee site — it’s pretty cool.

Smart Meters are an important part of the Smart Grid — far from the only important part, but integral and necessary. You’ll probably have one installed in your house in the next several years if you don’t have one already.

The Smart Grid is a pretty abstract thing. I thought I would write a few posts explaining some of the ways it plays a critical role in enabling a more efficient, more reliable and more flexible power system.

We Say “Jump!”, they say “How High?”

Today’s power plants generate electricity on demand. But how do they know they need more or less?

Partly, they predict based on weather, time of day, historical data, trends, and knowledge of the states of other power plants. Like a weather forecast, it’s not very accurate, and subject to change. Unlike a weather forecast there can be dramatic, unexpected changes, such as an outage at another plant, or a storm, or steamy weather. In short, prediction is a good guess at best.

But the more specific way a power plant knows it needs to deliver more or less power is by measuring the delivered voltage. The plant produces enough voltage to ensure that all customers get at least 114 Volts. If everyone turns on the lights at the same time, voltage will drop, so they’ll throw on a few shovels of coal and generate more.

This system works almost all of the time. It’s about as smart as a chicken.

Ready For The Unexpected

One of the costs associated with the inability to predict demand accurately is that the utilities always have to be ready to produce more power. Once a plant is up and running, they can juice things up pretty quickly — 5 or 10 minutes can bring on more power, but it’s idling, or “spinning” until then. Consider:

• A power plant that is up and running, but producing nothing, is running at 0% efficiency
• A given plant has an optimal production level; producing more … or less is inefficient
• All plants have a maximum output, at some level of demand, you need another plant to come online
• It takes a long time to “turn on” a plant from being off, so some plants are left to idle, not producing any power, but using fuel
• The most efficient and reliable plants are used first; as demand increases, older, less efficient plants are brought online
• We have relatively little spare capacity since our demand for power has been growing faster than we are building new plants

There’s a lot of inefficiency in this process, of which some is due to our inability to accurately predict or even know actual demand, predict and even communicate failures, and generally know what’s going on. The Smart Grid helps reduce or eliminate many of these inefficiencies.

114 Volts, Plus or Minus

As I noted, the power plant generates enough voltage to ensure that all customers get 114 Volts. They have no way of knowing that customers are actually getting that exact voltage, other than through various models (fancy spreadsheets) based on the various factors they can measure. Their last chance to control overall voltage is at the closest sub-station to the customer. But voltage drops as it travels further. So the customer close to the substation gets more voltage, and the one at the end of the line gets just enough.

The problem is that most appliances are optimized for a certain specific voltage. They’ll work if they get more (which is the usual case), but tend to throw off the excess as heat. You pay for that electricity — it’s just a really lousy way to heat your house (especially if the device you’re running is an air-conditioner).

How The Smart Grid Helps

The Smart Grid helps by changing a one-way communication system into a two-way system. Unlike regular meters, that merely keep track of the amount of electricity used, Smart Meters communicate back. The Smart Grid is able to use this feedback to provide instantaneous information about demand. This information can be used to be smart about how to use the available power — rather than just increasing overall voltage (using more fuel), the Smart Grid lets voltage get routed to exactly where it’s needed when it’s needed. Smart Meters can even play a part in this, actually being mini-sub-stations that route excess voltage down along the line.

So with a huge amount more information, the right amount of power can be generated, then right right voltage can be routed. Fewer plants need to be idling, and more plants can run at closer to their peak efficiency.

These are just a couple of ways that the Smart Grid plays a critical role in our power generation future.

While this first post is my personal introduction as I join the WattzOn blogging team, it is only the first of a string of introductions – the start of a thematic, serial illustration of diverse energy policy questions.

Much about energy policy remains underemphasized because it infrequently grips the imagination – somehow it seems we do not get as attached to energy-efficient appliances as we do to baby pandas and polar bears. I aspire to show that energy efficiency, industry, and technology can indeed provide fertile ground for your interest and curiosity. In the search to find items worthy of your attention, I will remain vigilant for clever, counterintuitive, or just plain unusual developments, reports, and ideas. I do not aim to provide either a news media rehash or personal commentary on current events. Instead, each post will be a small introduction, the equivalent of a short sketch, a paper impression fitted with appropriate outline and detail.

Inevitably, my “life experience” will influence the specific topics – which is another way of confessing that I will discuss some of my daily sights and sounds. However, generally speaking I plan on introducing selected issues and topics in conservation finance, banking and investment, East Asia, and energy policy. For one, I am spending the year in Beijing. I often notice industries here have an interest in reducing energy consumption that is symmetrical to their appetite for cheaper energy; demand receives as much emphasis as supply. In contrast, American public discussion centers on such questions of supply as making energy renewable or emissions-free.  Alternatively, other things just tend to catch the eye. For example, my university’s concierge staff’s living quarters are a series of Hutongs, each one with a small mountain of coal out front for fueling heating or cooking. Overall, I plan for each topic to  relate to more general concerns of energy policy – and topic suggestions are very much welcome.

Any person will tell you that a first impression happens but once. Fortunately, forming an opinion about complex questions surrounding energy is not a series of first impressions, but a prolonged process where information and ideas are assessed against each other. This implies that my posts will provide me with multiple opportunities, both to give you a good impression of current energy policy and to introduce a bit about myself.

Our house has a little ant problem and this year, and we need to do something about it. Sure, I could call the Orkin guy, but I wonder what exactly they would do to make them go away. I have no religious convictions preventing me from killing ants. But I do wonder.

So what does this have to do with energy, you may ask? Well, I am glad you asked. The answer involves sustainability.

If we look at how we use the resources of the earth as people, it becomes pretty obvious that we’re “using up” the earth. This is very evident in cases like fossil fuels, but also other resources like water and arable land. Those who study sustainability find ways to leave our surroundings unspoiled, or even slightly enriched, rather than “using it up”.

For example, sustainable buildings may have grass-covered roofs. These roofs insulate, sequester CO₂, purify and retain rain water so that it doesn’t just wash away the pollutants on the pavement into our larger water supply, reduce the use of resources like the tar or other highly manufactured materials, and the list goes on. Beyond that, grass-covered roofs look nice. They support life, even the lives of ants.

Sustainability considers the full life-cycle of the things we use and how we use them, and is not just about buildings. William McDonough is probably the most well-known sustainability expert and was one of the authors of Cradle to Cradle (a really accessible and delightful book - I recommend you read it). And if you do, read it while in the tub — it’s ok if the pages get wet, as it is printed on a very fine plastic instead of paper, a kind that is completely recyclable (unlike paper, which loses its quality each time it is recycled). But, the book has nothing to do with ants.

So, I started reading about ants. There are tens of thousands of different species. Most are harmless. Most live outside. They get busy in Spring. They have daily patterns. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood. A colony can have from tens of thousands to millions of ants. Ants “herd” other bugs like aphids because they produce a sort of nectar that the ants eat (how cool is that?).

And yes, you can get people to come and charge you and arm and a leg (or perhaps six legs?) to put all sorts of baits, traps, chemicals, and pesticides around your house. Or you can blast a suspected colony with Raid, spreading some more fine petrochemicals in our ground. But neither usually works, especially the latter, which might actually cause the formation of multiple new colonies (as I now know).

One more fact: ants tend to get into your house through cracks and gaps. The best solution, then is to find where they’re getting in and caulk.

Ah, see how it’s all coming together? If ants can get in from outside, so can the cold winter (and hot summer) air. I followed the ants for a few day and figured out how they got in — there were a few rather significant cracks. So, I used the ants to find the leaks I should have caulked last fall.

The ants are still happy and doing their thing … except now, outside. Our house will be warmer next winter and cooler this summer. No trucks loaded with chemicals came by our house. One quarter of a tube of caulk was used. I learned to love the ant.

Thinking about how it all fits together very frequently results in simple, elegant efficiencies. Think.

You may have noticed some of the new features we’ve been secretly adding to WattzOn over the past few weeks.  One of the most exciting is that those of you in the Northeast who use NSTAR and you Californians who use PG&E (with support for more companies to come) now have the ability to link to their online utility bills.

Instead of estimating monthly electricity and heating energy use in your housing profile, all you have to do is fill in your utility login information and all of your data will be automatically uploaded.  WattzOn will grab new bills as they appear, so you don’t have to do anything after you set it up to keep WattzOn up to date with the latest information from your life.  Even if you can’t use the automatic feature, you can easily enter your utility bill data manually.  Just click on the “Have more data? Enter it here” links on your Housing page to get to these advanced tools. From there, you can either go to “Link to your utility provider account” or just start entering the data in the form.

In addition to being a much more accurate accounting of your home power consumption, this new feature also lets you track your energy use (in watts and kg of CO2) over time with a new graphing tool.  Check out the graph of our utility bills here at Synthesis Studios:

I suppose it’s not too surprising that the majority of our energy use is in electricity given that we’re a software company with servers, computers, and miscellaneous gizmos galore.  And, it’s interesting to watch exactly how the summer months use more electricity (for A/C)  and the winter more natural gas (for heat).  But, perhaps most usefully, we can do month-to-month comparisons and see how our energy saving measures are working.  Last March we used 2,033 kWh of electricity and this March we’re down to 1,898 kWh, so we must be doing something right!

Recycling should be your second to last option. The best option is not using something that will need to be trashed. If that’s not possible, the next best option is to choose reusable alternatives.

But, if you have something to get rid of, by all means recycle it! The worst option is using something and then throwing it out.

With that said, here are a few tips to consider as you make your way to the recycling bin:

Don’t Wash (Rinse If You Must)

A particularly common suggestion is that you wash food containers before putting them in the recycling bin. Just make sure you don’t over-do it (and in some cases, don’t wash at all).

Remember, water, especially hot water uses energy and resources, too.

The only reason to rinse items is because between the time you put an item in the recycle bin and when it gets picked up, any food scraps would attract bugs … or larger beasts with beady eyes and long tails. Food scraps have no impact on the actual recycle-ability. The recycling process involves a great deal of water and detergents as it is. So, don’t go crazy washing with hot water or much soap (if any) - a quick rinse should do, and only if something is smelly.

Beware of Take-Out

Restaurants tend to over-do the packaging. We sometimes get Chinese food delivered. Each dish comes in its own box; either paper with a metal handle, or plastic. Then there are wooden chopsticks, little packets of soy sauce , plastic cups of orange sauce, mustard and plastic wrapped fortune cookies … all in a plastic bag.

Next time you order out, ask them not to send any extras with your food.

Styrofoam Is Evil

Polystyrene, a.k.a Styrofoam is effectively un-recyclable. It’s costly, lives forever, and takes up a large volume in landfills. Bad.

Try to avoid using it at all costs.

Junk Mail Can Be Stopped

We used to get scores of catalogs in the mail. Services like MailStopper are cheap or even free, and work great. We hardly ever get catalogs any more. There’s a similar service to stop phone books.

Where To Recycle Electronics, Light bulbs, Batteries

Check out this great recycling site, Earth911. They have resources to help you find out how to deal with almost anything.

Think About The Full Energy Life Cycle

Some things recycle well, like glass and aluminum. Plastic and paper require more energy to get a usable product back. But there’s more than that — the cost to get the virgin materials, to create the product, to transport, then to cart away, then to live in a huge landfill (in some cases effectively forever) — all of these have direct and indirect costs. In some cases, trash is incinerated — which is even worse from an energy perspective.