4 ms·

Wattvision (YC W09) Shows The Power Of Simple, Realtime Energy Monitoring

67 points by dbul 17y ago

dbul 17y ago
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.
- white_eskimo 17y ago
  Google PowerMeter works with TED (http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html)
tptacek 17y ago
No analog meter support. I'd have bought.
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  Coming soon. We'll email you as soon as we have it ready!
  - white_eskimo 17y ago
    Congrats Savraj! Out of curiosity, how are you powering the WiFi sensor?
    - savrajsingh 17y ago
      wall wart. :) ( < 1 watt )
staunch 17y ago
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?
- eugenejen 17y ago
  I think they have different sensors for digital ones. I think it is easier to make a sensor for analog one by checking the spinning wheel. It is pretty cool they can have a light device that reads the rpm of the spinning wheel and connects to internet via wifi.
- yellowbkpk 17y ago
  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.
- breck 17y ago
  the analog prototype i saw actually used a laser to read the spinning wheel. it was very cool and clearly saved the household money. i bet the digital meters are easier to read.
snewe 17y ago
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!
pg 17y ago
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.
- dschobel 17y ago
  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.
  - savrajsingh 17y ago
    Definitely looking in to that, it's a future iteration and a smart idea.
  - davidw 17y ago
    Sounds like something you could use ZigBee for.
  - dskhatri 17y ago
    Something like ladyada's Tweet-a-Watt? (http://www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/ 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.
- dskhatri 17y ago
  Yes, but that's not suprising, and not something you need Wattvision to tell you. An iron, a toaster, an electric kettle all consume a lot of power, but you only use these items for a short period of time. A smarter device would be more localized and attach itself and optimize the usage of individual systems like your boiler, house heating unit and HVAC.
kolya3 17y ago
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.
- ramanujan 17y ago
  I think it could be handy for businesses, universities, research labs, or anyone else that has a big power bill. Getting it itemized would be interesting.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    And doubly so for businesses with high power needs, such as data-centers or even software houses.
    - jsankey 17y ago
      But this doesn't seem to be their target market. The simplicity of installation, and the website, point to home users. If you're running a data center you probably already have more sophisticated systems in place.
  - gridspy 17y ago
    That is exactly what we do. http://gridspy.co.nz/ http://gridspy.co.nz/
  - savrajsingh 17y ago
    Good feedback. Yeah we can do that, too. ;)
- pg 17y ago
  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.
jonasvp 17y ago
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.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
physcab 17y ago
Wow this is cool. I thought you were in the deadpool. Your pricing scheme is a bit confusing. It's very Microsoft-esq.
christofd 17y ago
Very nice seamless implementation: device, connection, web-based, iphone. Full circle. Very professional. Great Name.
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  Thanks for the kind words christof!
Maciek416 17y ago
I live in a condo. Can I make use of the Wattvision?
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  Unlikely at the moment, but if you can find your electricity meter it's possible.
muerdeme 17y ago
Why do I have to click checkout to find out what the sensor price is? Even the pricing tab doesn't help...
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  It's $149 after the $50 TC coupon, will update, thanks for noting this.
einarvollset 17y ago
GO ON SAVRAJ MY MAN!!
milestinsley 17y ago
I've been using a similar device for a year now - the Wattson Home Energy Meter (http://www.diykyoto.com 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!
oldgregg 17y ago
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.
richcollins 17y ago
Very well executed. Hope it doesn't turn out to be an ice cream glove.
kingkawn 17y ago
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...
ChaseB 17y ago
http://www.google.com/powermeter http://www.google.com/powermeter hmmmm.....
- gridspy 17y ago
  - Not live (data up to a day old) - Requires a smart meter or another online meter such as a TED5000 - Extremely simple (at present)
  - cdibona 17y ago
    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)
    - gridspy 17y ago
      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.
      - cdibona 17y ago
        I hope I didnt' come off as competitive with Wattvision, the more people helping people save energy, the better we all are.
jacquesm 17y ago
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.
- gridspy 17y ago
  Good luck selling your wife / flatmate / employee on these tips without a nice visual aid. It gets much harder when there are multiple power users. Great list by the way. Our offgrid house uses the same amount of power per day as two towel rails by applying this sort of approach. The main power hogs are pumping fresh water and sewerage.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I wasn't aware the 'towel rail' was a new measure of power consumption, would that be the bath-towel rail or the toilet one ? Seriously though, how many KWh do you go through in a day ? We managed to get by on 1600 W of solar panels in Northern Canada, which in some weeks was touch and go on battery depletion (you really don't want to get below 70% or so). That's what kept us going in the dark of winter: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.JPG.html http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.J...
    - gridspy 17y ago
      Yeah, the towel rail is for the people who don't understand kWh. That is 3.5KWH per day, powered using a 640W solar array and a petrol generator when there are several days of particularly bad weather. The battery bank stores 1200AH at 24V, and like you we try to keep it at 70% charge or above. Gridspy was born out of monitoring power usage at the house both while there and while back in Auckland (90km away). Read more here (should probably add more numbers to this blog entry) http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html
gridspy 17y ago
For a competing solution, see Gridspy usage in Stephen's apartment here : http://your.gridspy.co.nz/prototype2/ http://your.gridspy.co.nz/prototype2/
shimon 17y ago
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/B001ELJKLE/ http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... Blue Line PowerCost Monitor: http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5GA/ http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5... 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.
kul 17y ago
I would buy this except $200 seems a bit steep.

67 points by dbul 17y ago

dbul 17y ago

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.

white_eskimo 17y ago
Google PowerMeter works with TED (http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html)

tptacek 17y ago

No analog meter support. I'd have bought.

savrajsingh 17y ago
Coming soon. We'll email you as soon as we have it ready!
- white_eskimo 17y ago
  Congrats Savraj! Out of curiosity, how are you powering the WiFi sensor?
  - savrajsingh 17y ago
    wall wart. :) ( < 1 watt )

staunch 17y ago

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?

eugenejen 17y ago
I think they have different sensors for digital ones. I think it is easier to make a sensor for analog one by checking the spinning wheel. It is pretty cool they can have a light device that reads the rpm of the spinning wheel and connects to internet via wifi.
yellowbkpk 17y ago
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.
breck 17y ago
the analog prototype i saw actually used a laser to read the spinning wheel. it was very cool and clearly saved the household money. i bet the digital meters are easier to read.

snewe 17y ago

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!

pg 17y ago

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.

dschobel 17y ago
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.
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  Definitely looking in to that, it's a future iteration and a smart idea.
- davidw 17y ago
  Sounds like something you could use ZigBee for.
- dskhatri 17y ago
  Something like ladyada's Tweet-a-Watt? (http://www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/ 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.
dskhatri 17y ago
Yes, but that's not suprising, and not something you need Wattvision to tell you. An iron, a toaster, an electric kettle all consume a lot of power, but you only use these items for a short period of time. A smarter device would be more localized and attach itself and optimize the usage of individual systems like your boiler, house heating unit and HVAC.

kolya3 17y ago

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.

ramanujan 17y ago
I think it could be handy for businesses, universities, research labs, or anyone else that has a big power bill. Getting it itemized would be interesting.
- dschobel 17y ago
  And doubly so for businesses with high power needs, such as data-centers or even software houses.
  - jsankey 17y ago
    But this doesn't seem to be their target market. The simplicity of installation, and the website, point to home users. If you're running a data center you probably already have more sophisticated systems in place.
- gridspy 17y ago
  That is exactly what we do. http://gridspy.co.nz/ http://gridspy.co.nz/
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  Good feedback. Yeah we can do that, too. ;)
pg 17y ago
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.

jonasvp 17y ago

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.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

physcab 17y ago

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

christofd 17y ago

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

savrajsingh 17y ago
Thanks for the kind words christof!

Maciek416 17y ago

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

savrajsingh 17y ago
Unlikely at the moment, but if you can find your electricity meter it's possible.

muerdeme 17y ago

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

savrajsingh 17y ago
It's $149 after the $50 TC coupon, will update, thanks for noting this.

einarvollset 17y ago

GO ON SAVRAJ MY MAN!!

milestinsley 17y ago

I've been using a similar device for a year now - the Wattson Home Energy Meter (http://www.diykyoto.com 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!

oldgregg 17y ago

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.

richcollins 17y ago

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

kingkawn 17y ago

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...

ChaseB 17y ago

http://www.google.com/powermeter http://www.google.com/powermeter hmmmm.....

gridspy 17y ago
- Not live (data up to a day old) - Requires a smart meter or another online meter such as a TED5000 - Extremely simple (at present)
- cdibona 17y ago
  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)
  - gridspy 17y ago
    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.
    - cdibona 17y ago
      I hope I didnt' come off as competitive with Wattvision, the more people helping people save energy, the better we all are.

jacquesm 17y ago

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.

gridspy 17y ago
Good luck selling your wife / flatmate / employee on these tips without a nice visual aid. It gets much harder when there are multiple power users. Great list by the way. Our offgrid house uses the same amount of power per day as two towel rails by applying this sort of approach. The main power hogs are pumping fresh water and sewerage.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I wasn't aware the 'towel rail' was a new measure of power consumption, would that be the bath-towel rail or the toilet one ? Seriously though, how many KWh do you go through in a day ? We managed to get by on 1600 W of solar panels in Northern Canada, which in some weeks was touch and go on battery depletion (you really don't want to get below 70% or so). That's what kept us going in the dark of winter: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.JPG.html http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.J...
  - gridspy 17y ago
    Yeah, the towel rail is for the people who don't understand kWh. That is 3.5KWH per day, powered using a 640W solar array and a petrol generator when there are several days of particularly bad weather. The battery bank stores 1200AH at 24V, and like you we try to keep it at 70% charge or above. Gridspy was born out of monitoring power usage at the house both while there and while back in Auckland (90km away). Read more here (should probably add more numbers to this blog entry) http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html

gridspy 17y ago

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

shimon 17y ago

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/B001ELJKLE/ http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/... Blue Line PowerCost Monitor: http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5GA/ http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5... 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.

kul 17y ago

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