GigaOM » Wattzon.com

Safeguarding Energy Data Amid the Rise in Consumption Calculation

Mary Catherine O'Connor — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:00:59 +0000

To manage it, you must measure it. That’s the mantra behind both consumer and enterprise carbon accounting initiatives. But to measure their eco-footprint, individuals often must share details about their lifestyles — everything from how often they run their heat or how much water they consume to what personal items they purchase — with service providers. Even if some don’t consider such information hugely confidential, storing this information attached to names or other personally identifiable data makes many people uncomfortable.

Following the boom in e-commerce and online social networking, one thing is painfully clear: Digital identities are powerful tools that can do as much harm as good. Identity theft, often perpetrated through online channels, hurts millions of consumers each year. So how can service providers go about creating digital profiles to detail energy consumption without compromising the security and privacy of the sources of the data? Three factors are key: control/ownership of data, data-sharing standards, and anonymity.

Let Users Opt In

Sharing data is essential to the goal of mapping out the energy consumption — or, as AMEE likes to call it, the energy identity — of everyone and everything. To address privacy concerns upfront, companies such as energy management web site WattzOn.com put the control right into the hands of the user, making the sharing of personal data — and how much data they share — an opt-in effort. That seems like a no-brainer. But that’s not the end of the privacy issue. Generally, people who use services such as WattzOn or sites powered by AMEE want to share their consumption patterns.

Once they’ve opted in, users can log back onto the site and update the number of miles they drive each week, or update their profile to reflect the new Energy Star washing machine they just bought. But that’s a pain, and users want it to be easy for them to track the effectiveness of the changes they make to lower their consumption over time. To address that need, WattzOn offers a real-time tracking service. Users can give WattzOn a look-see at their payment statements and utility bills; the software accesses the data and automatically updates the user’s profile. But now, WattzOn has to ensure the privacy and security of this data.

Use Existing Best Practices

WattzOn works with trusted third parties to access the information — it partners with personal finance management site Wesabe to pull pertinent purchasing data from users’ bank and credit card statements and works with participating utilities to access their meter readings. Once it pulls in this data, WattzOn then uses the same types of best practices and data encryption tools that these third parties use to protect the personally identifiable information of their users, according to WattzOn founding partner Raffi Krikorian.

This approach may work for WattzOn and other providers of personal carbon calculators. But AMEE is undertaking a much more ambitious project: calculating the energy consumption of not just people, but of buildings, products and companies. AMEE works in two ways. Individuals can set up their own profile through AMEE’s site directly or through one of its partners. They can add or remove the information at any time. If they choose, they can also have information added automatically through an RSS feed.

Promote Data Anonymization

Whichever path the user joins the service through, AMEE knows the individual through his or her AMEE ID, but does not collect personally identifiable data unless the user offers this up through metadata in the feed. Consumers are made aware of this, and it’s their choice to include this kind of data. AMEE founder Gavin Starks explains that AMEE doesn’t have any interest in linking consumption data with personal data — it doesn’t even store personally identifiable data in its databases. In fact, AMEE makes data privacy and protection a major focus of its efforts.

From its partners — such as Google, the UK government, Dopplr, etc. — AMEE collects records of individuals’ energy consumption. However, AMEE tracks each person’s record using a unique ID that does not link, in AMEE’s databases, with any personally identifiable data. Here’s how: Each partner collects the consumption data on the individuals in its membership base and then uses AMEE’s API to assign a unique ID to each record, using a key that authenticates each ID. Then each partner sends only a list of IDs and their corresponding consumption data to AMEE.

Whether it’s WattzOn’s work with third parties that are using security and encryption tools developed for e-commerce applications, or AMEE’s focus on keeping users anonymous and following the best practices of Internet privacy, these early drivers of carbon accounting initiatives have set a path for data security that others are likely to follow. Why reinvent the wheel when you could just give it a carbon footprint?

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Green:Net Videos: Saul Griffith, Mayor Newsom Q&A, Starks' AMEE

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:18:49 +0000

We’ve had a lot of requests for the videos and presentations of our speakers at Green:Net, the first green conference for the Internet industry. So here you go, guys; these are the first available video clips of mininotes from Saul Griffith, founder of Makani Power and Wattzon.com and AMEE founder Gavin Starks, as well as my Q&A with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. You can also find some of the speakers’ slide presentations in the right column of Earth2Tech. We’ll be adding more videos and presentations before the end of the week.

Saul Griffith, founder of Makani Power, Wattzon.com:

Gavin Starks, founder of AMEE:

Q&A with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom:

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WattzOn Launches to Tell You Your Life's Energy Use

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:27:26 +0000

A visual representation of your life’s energy consumption will probably make you feel pretty guilty — or, at least cognizant enough to make some changes in your behavior. That’s the idea behind Wattzon.com, a web site launched today by Saul Griffith, the co-founder of high altitude wind startup Makani Power, pull-cord power company Potenco and engineering incubator Squid Labs. Griffith, who says he made the alpha site out of a desire to know how much power he used in his life, showed off WattzOn to the audience at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this afternoon, and demonstrated the energy consumption visuals for his own life in 2007, in which he consumed 17,027 watts.

WattzOn — part social network, part wiki, part carbon-footprint calculator-style site — works by asking users to answer questions about their demographics and daily activities, including flying, commuting and food intake. The site then prompts users to itemize all of their personal stuff, like laptop, cell phone or car. The site also includes the energy data that the government spends on each user and it says by including this data it will help members “understand and democratically lobby for change” in the way government and society use energy on citizens’ behalf. Nice, we like a little proactive call to action in there.

After users enter their information, the site returns a number in watts and a pie chart showing how much energy each section of their life consumes. Users can drill down and modify different sections of their life like commuting, air travel, and housing. Unlike carbon footprint calculators, Griffith said that he chose to use the metrics of energy instead of carbon emissions, which many carbon footprint calculators use, because there are problems associated with using only carbon metrics. We’ll follow up with him about those concerns.

The ultimate goal of WattzOn is to help users reduce their energy consumption. At this point, that’s largely through comparing user’s energy consumption to various groups: the average WattzOn member, a historical American, the world in general. The site also reports energy equivalents in terms of solar panels, wind turbines, pints of oil burned and CO2 emitted. On their own, the comparisons are already affective, but we’re thinking as the site moves into beta and full launch, we’d like to see more concrete methods on how to reduce energy consumption.

The other issue we have is that it takes both a lot of work, and a lot of information that users might not know or have, to accurately fill in and get the energy footprint data. I started to get distracted when the site asked me how many foot miles I commute a day, and how many public transportation miles I travel per day — I just estimated and then felt like perhaps I was guessing too little. And I’m likely an unusually captive audience, so anyone who cares less will have even less of an attention span to enter that info.

The process of itemizing all of a user’s stuff is also particularly daunting. I mean, everything? Seriously? But Griffith also showed the audience how, as more users add in items, the community can select from already-created items for their footprint. That’s where the Wiki/social network part comes in.

While the site is still in alpha and has a few bugs, the design overall is clean and compelling. Also listed on the site is AMEE, the startup that has created an open API for energy data, so we’re thinking Wattzon is using AMEE at least for part of its engine. Update: Griffith just got back to us and says the site is looking to work with AMEE, but is not yet doing so.

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