
Ask HN: Honestly, what do you think of my idea? - traviswingo
Hey fellow Hacker News(ers). I have a side project I&#x27;ve been working on and really think it&#x27;s in an area that needs a lot of help.<p>Here is the link:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pulse.energy<p>Essentially, it&#x27;s a single api endpoint to allow developers to access a users utility account data (usage, billing, etc.) via an OAuth flow.<p>The idea is to lower barriers to entry and make it easier to build these types of applications so the world can better understand their energy impact and individual carbon footprint.<p>Examples of what could be built:<p>- Gamification platforms for energy consumption<p>- Mint.com-like applications for all utility accounts<p>- Applications that allow solar companies to more easily provide custom price quotes to customers, quicker.<p>I&#x27;m not trying to tell you what to build, just give you the tools to make it happen quicker.<p>Think Plaid but in the utility and energy space.<p>Thoughts? Honesty is preferred.
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winter_blue
I think the biggest question is whether there's really a market for it, and
companies willing to pay for it. It might take a while for Mint-like
applications to come up, and solar companies to discover your API and
start/consider using it. You might have to build something like that yourself;
e.g. a Mint-like web app for all my utility accounts -- if anything to make
the existence of pulese.energy more well-known.

I'll admit that it's definitely very useful. Having a standard API to query
usage data that works across various electric & gas companies is great. I
personally might sign up for your API because I like having that sort of data.
recently bought a WeMo Insight Switch to measure how much energy my desktop
computer was using. But is there a larger market for it, besides nerds like
myself? Are there B2B opportunities for your product; i.e. startups or large
companies that _need_ an API like pulse.energy?

What you're trying to build reminds me of the Clever API for education:
[https://clever.com/](https://clever.com/) They provide a standard API to
access student data that works across the heterogeneous systems that school
districts. I've worked at an educational software company in the past, and the
product I was building was critically reliant on Clever. Our product simply
wouldn't work without it.

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debacle
I don't think I'm under NDA for this (hope not):

There are already contracts and systems for parties to get this from the
utilities. Depending on the utility market, you can even get this information
realtime (not HFT realtime). The systems are really quite sophisticated, and
companies are already building all sorts of analytical platforms (from fancy
excel spreadsheets to ML applications) around the data that they do have
access to.

Do you have contacts in the markets? Do you plan to get this information using
some sort of meter? What kind of experience do you have with this type of
data? The data itself varies greatly in quality and that needs to be factored
in to anything you do. This information is also highly proprietary.

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soulnothing
I worked for a utility provider, to build out a pricing engine. Gathering
data, and generating a kw/hr rate, and determining when product changes
occurred, etc. We worked with a number of national utility companies. A big
portion was pulling data from the different utilities and coalescing it into a
common record.

In addition we need to make the records versioned. I.E. if the product for the
product was updated changing the kw/hr rate, we would need to record the
change and increment the version.

We were actually trying to get a common API and make it public like this.
Being utility agnostic, but still allowing viewing of customer information,
when authenticated. But we hit a lot of roadblocks. These can be narrowed down
to lack of interest. The team that maintained a lot of the customer relation
management (SAP). Only wanted to use vendor provided services, and nothing
developed in house. There was also a lot of in the weeds type analysis. There
was a utility in new york, that had a tariff tax, and candle energy tax that
had to be applied based upon a zip code to the kw/hr rate.

I think it's a field that is rife for disruption. Definitely beneficial, but
it's a bit of a work to encourage utility companies to utilize something like
this.

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sidthekidder
It seems a great idea if you manage to take care of the real-world business
side of things, integrating with utility companies etc I think that's the
difficult part.

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canzhiye
This looks like [https://utilityapi.com/](https://utilityapi.com/)

What's the difference?

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ahazred8ta
(also note [https://github.com/plaid](https://github.com/plaid) #financialapi)

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forkLding
I've worked as a developer on a similar project by a utility company, see:
[http://www.greenbuttondata.org/developers/](http://www.greenbuttondata.org/developers/)

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n2dasun
I think this is what Opower does commercially.

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traviswingo
Opower is actually an example of what could be built using Pulse. Opower
provides a data driven breakdown to customers to educate them on their energy
usage - these are the types of tools I'm hoping to make easier to build in the
future. There definitely aren't enough tools like that, and energy efficiency
is a huge problem that needs to be solved.

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bcjordan
Cool! What are some possible neat applications that could be built using
this—think, hackathon time-frame?

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traviswingo
I've just updated the details with a couple examples. The goal isn't to tell
people what to build, but to make it easier for them to build things. I
figure, lower barriers to entry and watch the possibilities unfold.

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anindha
I think this is cool, but I think you need to have some ideas of what pain
points you are solving.

When I installed a Nest it said that we were saving money but actually our
bills were higher. Correlating appliance usage to utility bill changes might
be interesting.

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traviswingo
The pain point Pulse solves is the difficulty that developers have in
accessing user utility account data. As much as there has been a push for
programs like green button connect, these programs will only be touched if the
utility has some sort of monetary compensation for doing so. The adoption rate
has been annoyingly slow, which is why applications that better educate users
on energy usage and consumption haven't been built.

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Mz
You need to get better at communicating this kind of thing on the site and
drop your position that you aren't trying to tell people what to build.
Listing such info will not compel other people to do as they are told. Not
listing it will cause a great many potential users to shrug and move on, never
having gotten any idea why they should be interested.

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miguelrochefort
Is this not a trivial idea?

