Next page: Green Button press releases and a new white paper >>

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By Doug Peeples

SGN News Editor

 

It started with an idea floated last fall by U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra: a simple online tool to help customers with smart meters take advantage of their energy use information and cut their power bills – and for utilities to make that data available through a standardized, easy-to-use format.

 

Now, the White House has just announced that the Green Button program, thanks to early adopters and utilities and vendors making new commitments to it, will make that easily accessible information available to 15 million households this year.  

 

The Green Button is actually several tools in one. Consumers can use it to help them choose the most economical rate plans for their electricity use patterns and get customized energy efficiency tips. In addition, the program includes tools to help consumers size and finance rooftop solar panels and take advantage of virtual energy audit software for even more cost savings.

 

Utilities making new commitments to Green Button include: American Electric Power, Austin Energy, Baltimore Gas & Electric, CenterPoint Energy, Commonwealth Edison, NSTAR, PECO, Reliant and Virginia Dominion Power. Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, Oncor, Glendale Water & Power and San Diego Gas & Electric made similar commitments in January.

The utilities agreed to use a common technical standard for their Green Button programs developed by a public-private partnership supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That standard opens the door on a significant market for software developers and applications and services providers to support program deployment.

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Smart grid key players Itron, OPower, Oracle and Silver Spring Networks made new commitments to the program, joining Aclara and Tendril. And several companies announced that they are developing related applications and services, including Belkin, Efficiency 2.0, EnergySavvy, FirstFuel, Honest Buildings, Lucid, Plotwatt, Schneider Electric, Simple Energy and Sunrun.

 

For example, Itron is incorporating Green Button in its energy data presentation software, and Silver Spring Networks customer engagement solution, CustomerIQâ„¢, also will support the White House initiative.

 

"Our support of Green Button continues Silver Spring's commitment to open, standards-based networking and innovation to enable a dynamic and thriving smart grid system," said Matt Smith, senior director of Silver Spring's demand side management business. "We are pleased to support the nationwide initiative which will empower consumers to make more informed decisions about their energy use."

 

The Green Button program is one of a number of government initiatives intended to help consumers and businesses reduce power costs. Will it get used? Add your comments using the Talk Back form below.

Next page: Green Button press releases and a new white paper >>

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Next Step....Utility Bills !

This is great. The next step is to mandate a utility data standard for representing monthly billing information. The lack of standards stops users from analyzing their bills, to take action to conserve energy or cut costs.

Mike Thomas - 03/23/2012 - 10:17

Re: Next Step....Utility Bills!

Dave Mollerstuen here, Chair of the OpenADE and ESPI committees that created the requirements and standards behind Green Button, and (acting) Plenary Secretary for the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP). Green Button is really just the first step in the delivery of usage information from the utility to the consumer. Green Button is the one-time download of historical usage information, from the utility directly to the consumer. The standard from which Green Button is derived, the NAESB Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI), allows the secure, customer-controlled delivery of usage information from the utility to a 3rd party on an ongoing basis. While there're many valuable applications that are being built on Green Button, there're many more that will only be enabled by utility and vendor adoption of ESPI. With the "overnight success" of Green Button (in reality the culmination of three years of requirements and standards work, with a much appreciated, well-timed push from Aneesh Chopra / the Office of Science and Technology Policy / the White House), we're getting a lot more interest in the "next set" of data to make available from the Utility backoffice. Mike Thomas' suggestion of monthly billing information in one possibility, but we've also heard requests for 1) pricing information (subtle -- but real -- difference versus billing); 2) messaging (e.g. communications from Utility to consumer); 3) demand response signals, etc. These requirements are currently being considered in the OpenADE taskforce, within UCAIug / OpenSG (google for contact info). Additionally, OpenADE is working or collaborating on 1) testing and certification for Green Button / ESPI; and 2) an open-source implementation of the ESPI protocol -- two items which are critical to remove "barriers to adoption" of Green Button / ESPI. We've had a broad collection of stakeholders (utilities, vendors, regulators, consumer advocates, etc.) that've contributed to the requirements and standards work in OpenADE and ESPI, but can always use additional perspectives (or even just more bodies to share the workload). Contact me -- dmollerstuen (at) alcaeng (dot) com -- if you want to contribute!

Dave Mollerstuen - 03/23/2012 - 12:56

Huber

Yes, Dave hit the nail on the head when he says that the real action will take place when apps can easily and automatically request this data via some variant of OpenADE. The current GreenButton is a very small but necessary first step, and allows a user to download their own data. But it's only a basic element in the complicated overall process to validate a user, download data using the Green Button and then upload the data to a third party for analysis and display. What's really needed is a programmatic interface (like OpenADE) that can enable a whole ecosystem of selfcontained smart apps. The GreenButton does way less than most people seem to think.

Joe - 03/23/2012 - 18:57

GreenButton - great in theory but....

Here! Here! I don't want to be negative about Green Button...but we know only around 2% of consumers ever log in to their utilities energy portal. Expecting them to download data files and upload into third party apps is a bit of a nonsense. Only 'energy geeks' will ever do it. The day consumers can simply connect the app of their choice to their utility account with just a few clicks is the day we should be really excited about. As a vendor of behavior change apps, I find Tendril's move to a 'platform play' for developers such as us (Change2) very interesting. It opens far more interesting doors than Green Button. The problem is we need something like this that is ubiquitous across utilities. OpenADE adoption would be fantastic.

Leon Young - 03/25/2012 - 18:30

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