An article published last week on the website ArsTechnica.com highlights an emerging trend in the car in at home in which reducing the amount of energy you consume is turned into a game. I won't attempt to replicate the entire article here because author Rob Pegoraro has already done an excellent job in his article and I would urge you to check it out.
Rob points out how technology in modern hybrid cars keeps careful track of the energy efficiency of your driving habits and effectively encourages drivers to save fuel by making a game out of good driving. This technology has seen great success in automobiles and is now starting to make its way into home energy use as well.
The marriage of new power metering devices and online monitoring by utilities allows homeowners to carefully track their energy use and see how the decisions they are making contribute to their overall energy use. In addition to this a new revolution in appliance design is set to be unleashed in which appliances can carefully monitor their energy use and report the data directly to the consumer. No longer will a homeowner need to speculate about the amount of energy used by a stove, washing machine or television. With no special plugs or additional technologies, the appliances will grant easy access of energy use data to consumers. Another exciting project highlighted in the article is a social mapping website Gainesville-Green.com which takes public energy use data and uses it to create a map showing the relative energy consumption of every home in the city. Low-energy users are given green symbols and high-consumers are shamed into changing their habits.
When lowering energy use is turned into a game, there can be no losers. One of the biggest barriers to this type of technology taking off is the reluctance of utility companies to make energy data available often enough for it be stay relevant. If the power company only reports energy use every quarter than it is hard to see how the decisions you are making are having an impact.
That's really interesting Andrew! I am just taking a look at the article and it seems really cool, keeping people informed in a game like setting is a fantastic idea!
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