Community Corner

Do You Use Less Energy Than Your Friends?

New application allows you to track energy usage and compete against friends.

Want a fun new way to cut your carbon footprint? The City of Palo Alto Tuesday began promoting a Facebook-connected app that pits you against your friends in a contest to reduce energy usage.

The new “social energy” app, Opower, allows residents to share and compare energy usage with their friends on Facebook after connecting their Palo Alto Utility account.

Once signed up, residents can see how their energy use compares to others and even compete against each other in savings competitions.

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The Opower app was born out of a partnership between Opower, Facebook and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and is being offered to Palo Alto utility customers as a way control electricity usage and costs. Residents here will join millions of other utility customers across the U.S. who now have access to the app.

“This expanded social media opportunity is an ideal complement to the Opower Home Energy Reports we already send to our Palo Alto residents,” says Valerie Fong, Utilities Director.  “When our customers engage online with others using this easy, fun tool, they are helping our entire community move towards more energy savings, reduced utilities bills and a more sustainable daily life.”

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The City Utility announced the app in a statement today. The app includes these features, (from the release):

  • Compare Energy Use to Similar Homes: People are able to benchmark their home energy use against a national database of millions of homes. All benchmark comparisons are done on an aggregate level, ensuring complete data privacy.
  • Compare Energy Use Among Friends: People are able to invite friends to compare their energy use against their own, show how energy efficient they are, and share tips on how to improve.
  • Publish Conversations About Energy to the Facebook Newsfeed: People are able to share information about their energy use, rank, group participation, and tips.
  • Group Development – Cooperation and Competition: Communities of people are able to form teams to help each other achieve collective goals. City of Palo Alto Utilities also has a utility page in Opower where customers can participate in challenges.
  • Automatically Import Energy Data: Customers of participating utilities, such as Palo Alto, are able to import their energy data into the application automatically, if they so choose. (Customers from utilities that are not participating will also have the option to input their energy usage into the app manually).

The NRDC says that energy efficiency improvements could potentially deliver $700 billion in cost savings in the U.S.

“The key to unlocking this potential is helping people understand both how they consume energy and how their behavior impacts the way that energy is used,” according to the statement. “Once people see these connections, they can be motivated to change their behavior.”

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