Smart Meters ‘Need Live Displays’

The UK has plans to install smart meters in all homes by 2020, but focus groups suggest graphical displays are critical to changing behavior:
Most people preferred a graphic indicator of their real-time rate of energy consumption, expressed in terms of expenditure per day.
A gauge of cumulative spend was also a popular idea. Consumers thought that [...]

Yet Another “Smart Grid Promotes Conservation” Story

The Times Green Inc. blog reports today on a study of energy use in 100 business and residential sites after a demand-response system was initiated:
A smart grid pilot project in Fayetteville, N.C., has resulted in an initial 20 percent decline in average electricity consumption, according Consert, a Raleigh, N.C. technology company.
Those numbers are based on [...]

Why so little action on climate change?

The American Psychological Association created a task force on psychology and global climate change. The draft report includes some interesting findings about the importance of immediate feedback of energy use, which might be provided by mobile information technologies like iPhone.
Here’s an excerpt on why (and what kind of) information matters
Studies generally find that information [...]

Demand Response Pilot in Boulder, CO

IEEE Spectrum reports on a smart meter pilot in Boulder, CA.
How do consumers actually behave when they have real-time data on their electricity usage. Do they use less? How much? Is it worth the investment for power cos.? For consumers? Will efficiency be rewarded or penalized due to regulations? Regarding investment risk:
”The real risk” [...]

Happy Earth Day

Overheard student (MBA?) conversation yesterday: “10 megawatt…. PV cells….ROI….”
The times, they are-a-changin.

UbiGreen: Positive Feedback for Low Carbon Travel

I’ve noticed growing innovation in the “track your greenness using our hip new digital tool” space.
 

UbiGreen, presented at CHI 2009 in Boston last week, uses a small belt-mounted sensor (more gear!) for acceleration etc. This data, combined with GSM location data, is used to “semi-automatically infer transportation mode.” Greener modes yield more points, which appear [...]

Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement

Congratulations to Richard Alley and Veerabhadran “Ram” Ramanathan who will share the 2009 Tyler Prize for environmental achievement. When asked by Andrew Revkin of the NY Times what comes next, Alley said:
We know so much about climate science, and environmental science in general, and the gap between the knowledge of the scientific community and the general community [...]

Google Power Meter

I’ve been talking about IS for sustainability for some time now, so I’m glad to see that Google is getting on board in the area of energy monitoring via Power Meter. Here’s the Google framing:
Our lack of knowledge about our own energy usage is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity for us [...]

Google PowerMeter

From the “it was just a matter of time” category, Google is purportedly working on an iGoogle app that will grab data from your electric company and provide real-time, granular (and hopefully, easy to read) data on energy consumption. Will this spur energy sweepstakes? human-centered incentives? facebook energy walls? Sign me up.

Eco-Visualization

A paper by Tiffany Holmes of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago argues that visualizing energy use may be a powerful untapped method for promoting conservation.
What is “eco-visualization”?

…creative visualizations of real time energy consumption. ….Eco-visualization also functions as a kind of social data exchange that promotes environmental stewardship; this emerging field has [...]