We’ve talked many times about giving the smart grid and smart meters a consumer focused raison d’etre – namely, smart markets – but here are two interesting articles about the limitations of pure social networking / peer pressure to motivate changing behaviors. As one article adroitly notes: “…we haven’t found the sweet spot for creating rewards for saving energy…” Smart markets anyone?
From the first article, courtesy of Treehugger:
“…Why are most people in the US not active about conserving energy? For many companies working on energy conservation tools, the answer seems to be because we haven’t found the sweet spot for creating rewards for saving energy, beyond a lowered monthly utility bill. Starting a few years ago, the solution seemed clear: link social networking with energy conservation. Somewhere in the mix of online gaming, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms there would be a social motivation to get people to conserve electricity. But nothing has really gained traction. And more importantly, quite a few of the start-up ideas are falling by the wayside. Why?
Why Is Social Networking Not Working for Energy Conservation?
Scientific American’s George Musser asks this question. Answering his own question, he writes, “I’m not quite sure what is going wrong, but my hunch is that people would sooner divulge their salaries than their energy stats. Or maybe they just don’t know their stats. If you fall into this category, get yourself a real-time energy monitor. Point being, the technology is out there–what lacks, for reasons good or bad, is the willingness to use it.”Social networks seemed to be the solution, indeed they may still be. But we haven’t seen a mainstream approval of talking about energy use in the same breath as what happened on Jersey Shore last night. And it’s that level of cultural acceptance of discussing energy use that would make social media a real solution for putting energy conservation at top of mind.
Companies Know Social Media Is a Solution… If Only People Cared
It’s not as if companies aren’t trying. Google created PowerMeter, OPower and Tendril both have social networking built into their platforms for utilities, and even the Tweet-A-Watt won for best gadget concept at Greener Gadgets three years ago.Yet other platforms with big names backing them aren’t doing so well. In January, Earth2Tech reported that Hug Energy shut down after low interest from investors.Wattzy shut down, citing the political atmosphere wasn’t supportive of energy-saving retrofits for homes. The biggest example may be Microsoft Hohm. There was a big push by Microsoft to get their free platform out to users and popular as a type of social media interaction. But the company never found the type of user engagement it needed to make Hohm work and now it is shifting focus to work more with EV charging.
Chris Kaiser of Map-a-Watt writes, “The most interesting thing to me about Hohm is that it was never that interesting to the masses…[I]t turns out, neighbors aren’t exactly clamoring to their computers to compare their energy consumption. This is something we all have come to realize. I’ve said many times over the last 2 years of blogging that if I were writing about Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, or (insert pop star who does nothing to improve America’s future yet is the darling of the media), then the Mapawatt blog would be extremely profitable. But “residential energy and sustainability” just doesn’t seem that high on everyone’s list.”
Does Energy Conservation Have To Have Celebrity Status?
But is it really that we need energy consumption to be as popular as Charlie Sheen’s Twitter stream in order to make it interesting? Social networking is about more than just gabbing about what’s hot in pop culture. It’s also about connecting with other people, using each other as support networks, information sharing, and knowledge resources. It’s about having people around you with whom to share information. And trying to find your energy stats, understand them, and improve them could use just such a platform.How is it that something like “checking in” to places and telling everyone exactly where you are at all times has become popular, yet sharing how many pounds of CO2 you saved that month hasn’t?
I don’t pretend to have an answer. It could be an issue of feeling too much like we’re bragging, or not latching on to the competitive spirit companies building the platforms thought we had in us. It could be that we don’t feel enough of our friends care about our energy consumption and so we’d be the odd ball in our social sphere, twittering about kilowatts and carbon emissions while everyone else is discussing something more comprehensible. It could be none of us feel confident enough about our energy use to want to tell the world about it — like wanting to lose weight before going to the gym.
But what we do know is that in the age of telling the world our every thought and action on Twitter and Facebook, sharing what we had for breakfast seems to be more important than sharing what we did to reduce our carbon footprint.
Social networking hasn’t become a solid tool for bringing energy conservation to the forefront of conversation. But can it still? While I can’t say what’s holding us back from making energy consumption as common in our online conversations as food preferences or gadget gossip, I do think that there is hope for it yet.
The second article also tries to look at where social networking and energy conservation may have gone wrong:
“…It was a match made in geek heaven. Combine the hottest online activity—social networking—with the biggest environmental challenge—energy conservation—and you get something yummier than peanut butter and chocolate. It’s not just a mashup of buzzwords, either. Most of us pat ourselves on the back about our energy-saving ways. Sure, we have our vices, but doesn’t our routine greenness make up for the occasional slippage, be it bright kitchen lights or an extra degree on the thermostat? Only by talking to neighbors and friends might we discover we aren’t so virtuous after all.
That’s what social networks could be good for. People’s competitive instincts might well be the country’s biggest energy source. Also, there’s so much confusing and conflicting information out there that it would help to be able to share our experiences of what works and what doesn’t. In the past couple of years, a number of sites sprouted up to meet this demand.
And now they’re withering away one by one, reports energy blogger Chris Kaiser at Map-A-Watt. He should know. Kaiser started to build a platform to share energy statistics; I tried out a beta version last summer. Then he had to pull the plug.Wattzy turned out the lights in October, and Hug Energy blew a financial fuse in January. The latest victim is Microsoft Hohm—an awkward Microsoftian name for a promising approach that I will miss.
Only a few sites remain:
Google Powermeter automatically downloads your energy usage from a home energy monitor or, depending on where you live, your utility. You can share the info with friends, if they care, which frankly they probably don’t. The main use, for me, has been the ability to monitor my solar generation from work. You can hack Powermeter to show gas-meter readings, if you have the right kind of meter.
Read Your Meter has the distinct advantage of recording gas as well as electric usage. Despite what the name might suggest, though, it doesn’t do the reading—you do. You have to type in the data from your utility bills manually. Energy Guy is much the same thing without the social-networking component.
Welectricity also requires you to type in your data manually. I’ve found it quite buggy; I kept encountering broken links. Only 227 people in the whole country have signed up for it so far. (If you do, friend me; my userid is gmusser.)OPower and Tendril (formerly GroundedPower) provide social-networking software to utilities for them to turn around and provide to their customers. At least, I think they do—their Web sites are incomprehensibly thick with bizspeak. I’m hoping to talk with Paul Cole at Tendril next week and will post my findings.
I’m not quite sure what is going wrong, but my hunch is that people would sooner divulge their salaries than their energy stats. Or maybe they just don’t know their stats. If you fall into this category, get yourself a real-time energy monitor. Point being, the technology is out there—what lacks, for reasons good or bad, is the willingness to use it. As always, let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comment fields below or on Twitter.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.