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Show HN: Glow, a smart energy tracker for your home

10 points by blach_out 9y ago

blach_out 9y ago
Hello HN! I'm one of the creators of Glow. Glow is the first full home energy monitor that you can install without calling an electrician or taking your life in your hands. In addition to providing a detailed web interface & mobile app, Glow changes color in real-time based on how much power you're using. Our findings have been that this information slowly improves how you use power, much like how the Prius's introduction of a real-time MPG display causes people to drive more efficiently. Glow also has goal setting, IoT integrations, and alerts if your energy usage is unusually high, for example when an electric oven has been left on by accident. One of the things I'm most proud of about Glow is how we found a way to use the magnetic field sensors commoditized by cell phones and a clever calibration technique to measure your power usage non-invasively. We've been working on Glow for over two years and testing it in real world homes for over 9 months. We'd love your feedback and support if it interests you.
- philippnagel 9y ago
  Congrats on the launch! However, why should I use this instead of a smart meter coupled with load profile disaggregation (i.e. no additional devices necessary)? Disclosure: I work for a smart metering company in Germany that offers that.
  - tectonic 9y ago
    Does your smart meter provide real time output? In the US, they're usually only hourly samples.
    - philippnagel 9y ago
      Almost. We get updates every two seconds.
  - blach_out 9y ago
    a) Feedback needs to be real-time (e.g. < 10s) b) Humans need that extra device. In home displays are key to long term daily user engagement. c) Disaggregation doesn't show super positive results so far. Super easy read on the subject: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00962.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00962.pdf
    - philippnagel 9y ago
      1. I was not aware that smart meters do not provide (near) real time data in the US. In that case your product makes sense of course. 2. Interesting. I have not considered that case before. 3. What makes you think so? Of course it's not simple but overall our results were positive so far. For example we were able to identify the exact movie being watched at any given time at one of our customers (https://134.147.101.39/media/nds/veroeffentlichungen/2012/07/24/GrJuLo_Smartmeter.pdf https://134.147.101.39/media/nds/veroeffentlichungen/2012/07..., unfortunately only available in German).
      - blach_out 9y ago
        What I meant by not "showing positive results", is that the actual effect of showing users disaggregated data hasn't yet been shown to be more effective a driving usage reduction than simple whole home data. It's super cool technology though (and that paper is awesome btw).
blackswan 9y ago
This is great. I manually monitor usage quite regularly at my meter (unfortunately not easy to get a smart meter in my country yet...) but it's just a number and you need to work out the current instantaneous usage. This just gives an intuitive sense. I really like interfaces that have this 'always-on-ness' and such a low barrier to insight. I've actually considered making a glowing light in my office to link to the conversion rate of my SaaS app. For emergency & binary type alerts I get an immediate text alert. But for slightly softer & less urgent metrics a variable color glowing light could be a good way to get across how fast I should look into things ('this week, tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon since it's looking quite orange!').

10 points by blach_out 9y ago

Hello HN! I'm one of the creators of Glow. Glow is the first full home energy monitor that you can install without calling an electrician or taking your life in your hands. In addition to providing a detailed web interface & mobile app, Glow changes color in real-time based on how much power you're using. Our findings have been that this information slowly improves how you use power, much like how the Prius's introduction of a real-time MPG display causes people to drive more efficiently. Glow also has goal setting, IoT integrations, and alerts if your energy usage is unusually high, for example when an electric oven has been left on by accident. One of the things I'm most proud of about Glow is how we found a way to use the magnetic field sensors commoditized by cell phones and a clever calibration technique to measure your power usage non-invasively. We've been working on Glow for over two years and testing it in real world homes for over 9 months. We'd love your feedback and support if it interests you.

philippnagel 9y ago
Congrats on the launch! However, why should I use this instead of a smart meter coupled with load profile disaggregation (i.e. no additional devices necessary)? Disclosure: I work for a smart metering company in Germany that offers that.
- tectonic 9y ago
  Does your smart meter provide real time output? In the US, they're usually only hourly samples.
  - philippnagel 9y ago
    Almost. We get updates every two seconds.
- blach_out 9y ago
  a) Feedback needs to be real-time (e.g. < 10s) b) Humans need that extra device. In home displays are key to long term daily user engagement. c) Disaggregation doesn't show super positive results so far. Super easy read on the subject: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00962.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00962.pdf
  - philippnagel 9y ago
    1. I was not aware that smart meters do not provide (near) real time data in the US. In that case your product makes sense of course. 2. Interesting. I have not considered that case before. 3. What makes you think so? Of course it's not simple but overall our results were positive so far. For example we were able to identify the exact movie being watched at any given time at one of our customers (https://134.147.101.39/media/nds/veroeffentlichungen/2012/07/24/GrJuLo_Smartmeter.pdf https://134.147.101.39/media/nds/veroeffentlichungen/2012/07..., unfortunately only available in German).
    - blach_out 9y ago
      What I meant by not "showing positive results", is that the actual effect of showing users disaggregated data hasn't yet been shown to be more effective a driving usage reduction than simple whole home data. It's super cool technology though (and that paper is awesome btw).

blackswan 9y ago

This is great. I manually monitor usage quite regularly at my meter (unfortunately not easy to get a smart meter in my country yet...) but it's just a number and you need to work out the current instantaneous usage. This just gives an intuitive sense. I really like interfaces that have this 'always-on-ness' and such a low barrier to insight. I've actually considered making a glowing light in my office to link to the conversion rate of my SaaS app. For emergency & binary type alerts I get an immediate text alert. But for slightly softer & less urgent metrics a variable color glowing light could be a good way to get across how fast I should look into things ('this week, tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon since it's looking quite orange!').