

Wattvision (YC W09) Shows The Power Of Simple, Realtime Energy Monitoring - dbul
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/10/wattvision/

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kolya3
Honest question, is this solving a problem and who has this problem? I pay
about $30/month for electricity and I already know it goes up to about
$80/month during the winter months. $200 seems like a lot of money to pay for
someone to tell me what I already know.

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pg
Wattvision tends to cut your power use, because you're probably wasting power
in ways you don't know about. When you first install it, your initial reaction
is generally "why are we using so much power?" Then you walk around turning
things on and off and watching what happens to the graph. You usually discover
some surprises in the process, and those change your behavior.

You make what you measure. Watch any number carefully enough and you'll tend
to optimize it, and most households have significant room to.

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gcheong
What is the average time to recoup the cost of the meter and start actually
saving money?

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gridspy
If you believe the normal claim that you will save 10-30% and your average
monthly power bill is > the cost of monitoring it will take you less than 1
year to pay itself off.

So if your bill is $150 a month, this system (or similar) should pay for
itself within a year - IF you try to save power using it.

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pg
I'm one of the alpha users, and I've found it surprisingly interesting. When
you install Wattvision, you can suddenly see all sorts of things you never
knew about. For example, how much power electric kettles use. When I switch on
our electric kettle, it doubles the power consumption of our house. Who knew?
So now when I use it I only put in as much water as I need.

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dschobel
has this team considered an expansion into device level power monitoring down
the road? plugging a sensor into the jack itself?

that would be really compelling if it were possible to make the sensors small
enough and inexpensive enough.

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dskhatri
Something like ladyada's Tweet-a-Watt?
(<http://www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/>). Device level monitoring makes so
much more sense! Especially when a utility provides variable pricing for the
electricity. For example, an monitoring unit built into the dishwasher would
be able to turn on the appliance when the electricity demand is low and hence
the kWh cost is low. But yes, it's a good starting point for Wattvision. Their
future releases will probably be smarter and richer in features.

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jacquesm
Let me save you $200:

\- turn stuff off when it is not in use

\- get rid of your old fridge/freezer

\- get rid of any crts that you still have

\- take a good look at wall warts and decide which ones really need to be
plugged in when they're not charging something

\- use a laptop, not a desktop, and enable powersaving

\- use CFLS instead of bulbs

\- run your heater at 18 degrees celsius (whatever that is in Fahrenheit)

\- do _not_ use electric heat for anything other than your quick-boil kettle,
so no electric range etc.

There, that will save you $200 and at least that much in electricity.

The above list is a compilation of the outcome of a years worth of
experimenting in a house that was powered by solar cells, the great insight of
all that is that it is 10x as cheap to save a Watt hour than to generate one.

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theli0nheart
Thank you.

And also, for the record, I am aware that FPL is testing a product that syncs
in with home networks in some cities across Florida. They're charging
something like $2-3 / month for the service, which in my mind is a much better
deal, especially since their analytics are probably far better.

I'm looking for a link now.

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gridspy
Most smart meter based solutions give you data in 15 minute chunks at the end
of each day. Real time data really is far more useful.

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dbul
I saw a CNN story last week about Google's free energy monitoring software.
Then at the end of the story was a huge let down: you need special hardware to
get it running.

I checked Wattvision right after that and there were no updates, so today I'm
super happy to see that the hardware is available. If it proves to work well,
hopefully we'll see a story on CNN (i.e. to the public at large) in the next
few months.

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white_eskimo
Google PowerMeter works with TED
(<http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html>)

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snewe
With the wealth of data that they collect, this would be a great place for an
economist (like myself:)) to study usage patterns and possibly conduct
experiments.

Of course, the set of people that buy this device are more "green" than the
average consumer and also more likely to change habits. Nonetheless, looking
at correlations of household-level usage with location specific variables like
weather, sporting events,etc. could be really interesting. Moreover,
conducting experiments where alerts are different for 50% of the users to test
how responses differ would really illustrate how public policy should move
forward. Think of the A/B testing web developers use, but with possibly wide-
ranging consequences.

Great work!

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milestinsley
I've been using a similar device for a year now - the Wattson Home Energy
Meter (<http://www.diykyoto.com>). It's not as full featured as Wattvision and
doesn't connect over WiFi, but the information it reveals is extremely
interesting and enlightening.

It's easy to merely understand power usage (I always have done), but to see it
revealed and presented like this is particularly fascinating. It's makes you
stop and think. This is a good thing, for both environmental and educational
reasons.

I can't wait to get my hands on Wattvision, and good luck to them!

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jonasvp
If you're interested in non-realtime energy monitoring (and speak German),
check out my skunkworks project from way back: www.stromverbrauch-online.de

You sign up, regularly put in your current meter readout and get an estimate
of your monthly and yearly electricity bill. No hardware required. I've gotten
a number of signups since and some people really get religious about putting
in their data - some do it every other day!

Getting your energy consumption down can be an interesting sport, see the
Tweet-A-Watt.

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oldgregg
People won't pay $200 to save a little money on their heating bill. People
WILL pay $200 to have a facebook widget that says they were the #1 greenest
home in their neighborhood/city. A little game theory applied to reducing
energy consumption. Doesn't really have to be realtime either, if I could plot
the energy usage of all my neighbors on a google map it would certainly shame
people into submission.

Nobody really gives a damn about being green, green chic on the other hand...
I can't wait to try it out.

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shimon
This looks like a great product. Nobody seems to have mentioned the
competitors, though, which include some pretty mainstream brands.

Black & Decker EM100B Energy Saver Series Power Monitor:
[http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-
Monitor/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-
Monitor/dp/B001ELJKLE/)

Blue Line PowerCost Monitor: [http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-
BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5...](http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-
BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5GA/)

I believe I saw the B&D model on an episode of "Ask This Old House". Not sure
if any competitors offer a web or iPhone interface, or just the receiver
devices, but in any case this is a useful form of feedback that will likely
become a standard feature as the monitoring equipment gets cheaper.

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christofd
Very nice seamless implementation: device, connection, web-based, iphone. Full
circle. Very professional. Great Name.

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savrajsingh
Thanks for the kind words christof!

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kingkawn
After my parents got a prius, they noticed that their gas mileage in their
other car went up as well, because they learned how to drive more efficiently.
What they really needed was feedback.

This looks like it could have the same benefit.

But the name...

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tptacek
No analog meter support. I'd have bought.

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savrajsingh
Coming soon. We'll email you as soon as we have it ready!

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white_eskimo
Congrats Savraj! Out of curiosity, how are you powering the WiFi sensor?

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savrajsingh
wall wart. :) ( < 1 watt )

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richcollins
Very well executed. Hope it doesn't turn out to be an ice cream glove.

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ChaseB
<http://www.google.com/powermeter>

hmmmm.....

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gridspy
\- Not live (data up to a day old)

\- Requires a smart meter or another online meter such as a TED5000

\- Extremely simple (at present)

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cdibona
Actually, I'm looking at the in-house readout and it is quite live. (to the
second) The gadget lags, but maybe 10 minutes, not a day.

I'm using the ted5k. I don't know what you mean by simple, it's really
detailed, and you can even load pricing models into the device and get an idea
of what everything costs and when.

edit: Also, it uses induction coils around the mains feeds. It's easy enough
to install that I did it myself.

(and disclaimer: I work for google)

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gridspy
I meant that the Google dashboard seems to be quite simple in its list of
features by comparison with the TED5000, Wattvision or my planned features for
Gridspy.

Also, saying that Google is competing with Wattvision is not quite accurate
since vendors like ourselves are hoping to integrate with Google's (your)
solution. The only way in which it competes is in exposing smart meter data to
the average user. That data requires a smart meter and is often expensive to
collect (using GPRS for example) so is collected relatively infrequently.

Now in many of these areas I have to speculate because smart meters aren't yet
being rolled out where I live. To use Powermeter here in NZ the user has to
spend money for a solution such as Wattvision, TED5000 or Gridspy.

Finally, all this is moot if you want a system that can localise the power
usage to particular circuits in your building such as Gridspy.

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cdibona
I hope I didnt' come off as competitive with Wattvision, the more people
helping people save energy, the better we all are.

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gridspy
Amen to that. We all have our own unique strengths and weaknesses. More choice
for the consumer. Looks like there is a huge market to save power + money +
the environment all in one.

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staunch
I couldn't find any info on how the thing reads the meter. Is it plugging into
the meter via an open port, do these digital meters all have wireless
transmitters themselves, or does it do something crazy like use a camera?

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yellowbkpk
Almost all of the digital meters have an IR LED that blinks once for every
kilowatthour that is consumed by the house. Their device (along with the one
that Black and Decker sells) sits on top of the meter, counts the number of
blinks every few seconds, then sends that over some sort of wireless to the
internet.

I have yet to figure out how to intercept the Black and Decker's signal to
duplicate wattvision's functionality. This is easy(ish) to do with a mini
Arduino and a pair of XBee radios.

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gridspy
For a competing solution, see Gridspy usage in Stephen's apartment here :
<http://your.gridspy.co.nz/prototype2/>

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Maciek416
I live in a condo. Can I make use of the Wattvision?

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savrajsingh
Unlikely at the moment, but if you can find your electricity meter it's
possible.

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muerdeme
Why do I have to click checkout to find out what the sensor price is? Even the
pricing tab doesn't help...

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savrajsingh
It's $149 after the $50 TC coupon, will update, thanks for noting this.

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kul
I would buy this except $200 seems a bit steep.

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physcab
Wow this is cool. I thought you were in the deadpool. Your pricing scheme is a
bit confusing. It's very Microsoft-esq.

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einarvollset
GO ON SAVRAJ MY MAN!!

