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Ask HN: Honestly, what do you think of my idea?

15 points by traviswingo 10y ago

Hey fellow Hacker News(ers). I have a side project I've been working on and really think it's in an area that needs a lot of help. Here is the link: http://pulse.energy Essentially, it's a single api endpoint to allow developers to access a users utility account data (usage, billing, etc.) via an OAuth flow. 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. Examples of what could be built: - Gamification platforms for energy consumption - Mint.com-like applications for all utility accounts - Applications that allow solar companies to more easily provide custom price quotes to customers, quicker. I'm not trying to tell you what to build, just give you the tools to make it happen quicker. Think Plaid but in the utility and energy space. Thoughts? Honesty is preferred.

bcjordan 10y ago
Cool! What are some possible neat applications that could be built using this—think, hackathon time-frame?
- traviswingo 10y ago
  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.
  - anindha 10y ago
    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.
    - traviswingo 10y ago
      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.
      - Mz 10y ago
        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.
sidthekidder 10y ago
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.
winter_blue 10y ago
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.
soulnothing 10y ago
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.
debacle 10y ago
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.
canzhiye 10y ago
This looks like https://utilityapi.com/ https://utilityapi.com/ What's the difference?
- traviswingo 10y ago
  This service focuses heavily on the solar installer side to provide a quick way to quote customer on new solar installations. Pulse focuses on developers.
- ahazred8ta 10y ago
  (also note https://github.com/plaid https://github.com/plaid #financialapi)
forkLding 10y ago
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/
n2dasun 10y ago
I think this is what Opower does commercially.
- traviswingo 10y ago
  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.
miguelrochefort 10y ago
Is this not a trivial idea?