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Online tool rewards ComEd customers who save energy—June 3, 2010

CUB Energy Saver automatically links to your Commonwealth Edison bill to track savings, rewards your energy savvy with points redeemable for gift certificates and lets you compete against your neighborhood and friends.

The free program, available at cubenergysaver.com to ComEd customers, is the first online program in the nation to reward consumers for reducing their energy usage and combines elements of similar programs that are being tested but have yet to be introduced on a large scale by ComEd and other utilities. According to CUB, customers in its 3,000-person pilot program saved $200 annually and earned points toward gift certificates averaging $130 per year. (link)

Utility Board hopes incentives will lead to energy-saving—June 2, 2010

The users set up their own “personal audits” showing the types of power they use—electric heating, central air-conditioning and electric water-heating, for example. They choose a saving plan from three options: No-cost, low-cost, and home investment.

They can track on the Web site how much they are saving by replacing a certain number of light bulbs or washing a load of clothes in cold water, among other activities.

Individual users also may view a map that lets them see how their energy savings compare with others in the neighborhood. Users may turn off this feature if they don’t want to be listed on the neighborhood map, and they may compare themselves to the community as a whole rather than to individual neighbors. (link)

Smart Algorithms: The Future of the Energy Industry—April 29, 2010

“Utilities will have to embrace energy information analytics if they want to reach their energy efficiency targets,” says Tom Scaramellino, the founder and CEO of startup Efficiency 2.0, which has spent the last 5 years developing energy management algorithms that can offer utility customers highly personalized energy-efficiency recommendations.

Efficiency 2.0 is using its algorithms—developed by researchers that came from Yale, Harvard and Columbia—to get utility customers to reduce their energy consumption in various ways. …Using this type of data the service makes a profile of the customer and can make highly-accurate educated guesses on how the customer would or would not reduce their energy consumption. (link)

And America’s Greenest Campus is…—Oct 13, 2009

The contest, which was funded by grants from the Department of Energy and various foundations, will award the two schools $5,000 each, to be put towards green initiatives on campus

In total, more than 460 schools and 20,000 people participated in the contest, which began in April and was created as a partnership between Smart Power, a nonprofit clean-energy marketing company, and [Efiiciency 2.0’s project] Climate Culture, a clean-energy social networking site (think Facebook meets the Jenny Craig of carbon).

Among other metrics, the schools saved a combined $4.5 million in energy costs and reduced their collective carbon output by 18.6 million pounds, a number roughly equivalent to the annual amount of carbon emitted by 1,900 cars. (link)

Energy use falls when neighbors compete—Sept 30, 2009

At Efficiency 2.0, a New York-based software provider to utility companies, Andy Frank’s team is working with the Western Massachusetts Electricity Company to create a Facebook-like community where people can help one another save energy and compare results in a friendly, yet competitive way.

Online comparisons come with frowny or smiley faces and also give people highly customized tips about how they can reduce their energy use. It offers, for instance, a calculator tallying myriad decisions – take shorter showers, adjust thermostat settings, or hand-wash dishes.

“We’re like Weight Watchers for your energy use,” says Mr. Frank, Efficiency 2.0’s executive vice president for business development. “Most Americans would like to lose weight, but they don’t do it because they don’t get feedback. We provide that feedback [to cut energy use.” (link)

Energy-Use Software to Rival Google’s?—July 28, 2009

But one New York-based startup called Efficiency 2.0, which has spent the past four years developing sophisticated energy management algorithms, says it’s the first to be able to offer truly targeted energy-efficiency recommendations to customers, which it believes will put it at the front of the pack.

Efficiency 2.0’s software collects a whole bunch of information about the energy consumer—like location, age and demographic data, as well as some answers the consumer provides in response to prompted questions about lifestyle and residence—and churns out recommendations on ways to curb energy consumption that rings true for each individual. For example, if the user is 23, Scaramellino said, then the engine would likely recommend more cost-effective energy-saving techniques that don’t require a lot of up-front expense (link)

Credits for Cutbacks—June 15, 2009

To achieve the emission-reduction goals that states and the federal government are discussing, the door needs to be thrown open to third parties, such as the companies that do efficiency projects in Connecticut, says Andy Frank, executive vice-president of business development at Efficiency 2.0, a New York-based start-up and provider of software that helps households and small businesses save energy. The old process of utilities proposing projects and regulators approving them is too small and clunky and slow, Mr. Frank says. To reach the needed scale, he says, market-based approaches are needed.

Connecticut’s efficiency market “is important nationally,” Mr. Frank says, “because it is proving a model for other states.”

Efficiency 2.0 wants to use software to help people track and change how they use electricity at home. Homeowners would commit to certain cuts in consumption and share in the credits they help produce on top of lowering their electricity bills. (link)

To Save the Earth, Start with Data—April 22, 2009

“All these major media companies are giving people green tips. Frankly, three quarters of the time they have no clue what they’re talking about,” said Thomas Scaramellino, founder of Efficiency 2.0, which makes energy-efficiency software for utilities. “We think the general awareness is helpful, in principle. But you’re setting yourself up for a backfire into a deep skepticism.”

[Efficiency 2.0] provides utility customers with granular data about the specific energy usage and CO2 reductions that their actions will have in their homes, based on the energy system where they live. While it might be frustrating for greens in Birmingham that their power is dirtier than their friends in Los Angeles, it also means that Alabamans reducing their electricity usage could have a bigger climate impact. (link)

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Residential Energy Efficiency: This Is How We Do It—June 9, 2009

Software technologies can also play a significant role in behavior programs. Online energy audit tools have been used for many years to help households understand their energy use. Most utility websites combine audit software with energy “tips” that recommend energy reduction actions. The accuracy of these audits is based on the sophistication of the energy algorithms, the number of customer inputs, and the amount (if any) of actual usage data that is integrated. Software is, of course, cheap compared to hardware, and can scale very easily. On the other hand, customers must make an active decision to utilize the software. Therefore, the software must be fun and easy to use, and effectively break down information, legitimacy, and social barriers while providing relevant feedback. Long surveys and generic tips are not enough in this day and age. (link)

Residential Energy Efficiency: It’s the Behavior, Stupid—May 11, 2009

As utilities, regulators and other market actors face increasing pressure to dramatically ratchet up energy efficiency and demand response programs, a new buzzword, behavior, is fundamentally changing the approach to energy efficiency. Behavior strategies, often grouped with close cousins marketing, education, outreach, conservation and market transformation, offer the promise of dramatically increasing the reach, cost-effectiveness and verifiability of energy efficiency investments. By combining the insights of behavioral science and consumer marketing with advanced technologies, changes in household energy use patterns and purchases of energy efficiency products and services can be strongly affected. (link)