It’s called the Prius Effect. Drivers of the Toyota Prius are given access to real-time information about the rate at which their car is consuming gasoline through a visual display in their dashboard. To keep this rate low, drivers shift their behavior by decreasing rates of acceleration, rolling up windows, adjusting the AC, and controlling speed. As a result, many Prius owners use even less gasoline than can be accounted for by the car’s gas/electric engine, all because they were theoretically empowered by data.
The great hope in energy management is that the Prius Effect will apply to residential and commercial consumers of electricity. By becoming more efficient in our electricity usage as a society, we can eliminate much of the waste that comes along with building more capacity and save a lot of money in the process. Solutions are already available to help consumers monitor and adjust rates of electricity usage via a home energy panel, web interface, or smart phone application, but rates of adoption have been meager at best.
Consider, for example, the 6% adoption rate of Google PowerMeter in their 2009-2010 pilot with San Diego’s Sempra Energy (1). The software, accessible within iGoogle on a computer or smart phone, provides users with a near real-time display of electricity usage. The included video provides more information.
Given Google’s ability to extract value out of data and present it in a user-friendly interface, the main culprit behind the low adoption rate is likely not in the information provided. The issue, I predict, is in the immediate ability of the user to act on this information. A dedicated user could check their PowerMeter charts and identify after some experimentation which devices should be powered down. Unfortunately, most of us are not that dedicated.
The solution: Tightly Integrated Smart Phone Applications
With the expected proliferation of both smart phones and smart grid technologies in 2011, the opportunity to greatly link these two technologies looms large. Over the next few weeks I hope to identify and explore multiple promising technologies in this area. If you have any suggestions, please share.
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References:
(1) http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/03/sempra-energy-google-powermeter/ Greenbeat. 2010. Accessed on April 8, 2011
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