Reducing Residential Energy Consumption through Metering, Monitoring, and Control Technology

Public awareness and concern for environmental issues, including climate change, are at an all time high, but consumers have very little information about what they can do in their everyday lives to address these issues. Besides driving a hybrid car and replacing incandescent light bulbs, many consumers find the options to improve the sustainability of their lifestyle to be elusive, limited, or prohibitively expensive. Within this context, electricity represents one of the major sources for potential energy savings, and these savings can translate directly into a smaller “carbon footprint” for consumers.

Our solution will empower residential homeowners to save money and minimize their environmental impact through reduced electricity consumption, spurred on by the simple premise that awareness and control lead to behavioral change.

Our technology will bridge the information and control gap of electricity consumption in the home by giving consumers the ability to monitor and manage their electricity consumption at the appliance level. It will empower homeowners to save money and minimize their environmental impact through reduced electricity consumption.

We will enter into distribution partnerships with consumer electronics retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City. In exchange for prominent shelf space and price subsidies (such as store sponsored discount coupons), we will provide these retailers with one-to-one marketing channels to consumers. These retailers will be able market to individual consumers based on each consumer’s unique electricity and appliance usage patterns. For instance, retailers will be able to suggest replacements for an old, inefficient refrigerator based on customer specific data.

Once a sufficiently large install base has been achieved, aggregate energy usage data will also be used to provide demand response services to utilities. For example, utilities will be able to request that certain appliances be turned off during periods of peak demand.

Our technology will achieve rapid adoption by creating value for homeowners, retailers and eventually utilities, and will become the industry standard for metering and control of energy consumption at increased granularity inside the home.

Required resources:

1. Total project needs: $100,000