As growth slows, Opower looks beyond energy efficiency
So long WiFi thermostat
Opower has long been the energy software player to beat. But almost a year after it went public at $25 per share…
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Opower has long been the energy software player to beat. But almost a year after it went public at $25 per share…
The smart home, smart grid, IoT platforms, and industrial IoT applications are key sectors that will lead in innovation.
Decade-old energy company Tendril has struck an important deal with giant solar panel maker and project developer SunPower, the companies announced on…
Energy companies have to be software and data-focused companies these days.
In a large program in Nevada last Summer, EcoFactor’s data analytics beat the competition.
Energy software company Opower has built a business off of encouraging utility customers to curb their energy consumption through detailed energy bills.…
In its first earnings report as a public company, energy software player Opower (s OPWR) said it’s grown its revenue for the…
The cleantech crowd was right, at least when it comes to the impact that climate change is having on our planet. Here are some tech trends to watch while the planet is warming.
Opower started trading at $25 per share Friday morning, giving it a big pop from its $19 per share price last night.
Opower has priced its IPO at $19 per share in the late hours before trading on Friday morning.
Following Opower’s IPO, the energy software company will need to grow its products to current utility customers. And bring in new utilities, too.
Now that Opower is going public, its market value is out there — and it’s worth less than a third of another smart energy company, Nest.
Opower has set the price range on its planned IPO, and it could raise $110 million in the offering.
Opower is officially planning on going public, as its revenues grow considerably, though it still hasn’t turned a profit.
The co-founders of Opower tell us about the top 5 trends they’re watching when it comes to utilities.
After much speculation Opower is planning on finally going public, according to a report.
Energy software startup Opower says it’s now collectively saved 3 terawatt hours of energy — or enough to power the homes in…
By the end of the decade almost all of British homes are supposed to get smart, digital, connected utility meters installed. And the plan is seeing some large contracts handed out to vendors like Landis+Gyr and Telefonica.
Social pressure influences everything in our lives from our habits to our clothing choices to the food we eat. It also can be harnessed as a power tool to reduce energy consumption in our homes.
Startup WibiData has raised another $15 million and wants to turn the lessons it has learned in the field into generic software that can let anyone build predictive applications on Hadoop.
Learning thermostat maker Nest has acquired a Boston-based energy data startup called MyEnergy. The company will help Nest develop its energy data services and continue its missions of working directly with the consumer to reduce home energy consumption.
While Nest is widely known as a consumer-focused smart thermostat maker, the startup has quietly been developing services it can offer in conjunction with utilities, which can curb customers’ energy use while also lowering their energy bills.
Use cases at the Strata conference show that information gleaned from Hadoop and other big data technologies can bring companies new revenue streams and cut expenditures.
Data analytics took the energy sector by storm in 2012, and a bunch of companies launched, raised funding and grew their businesses last year. Here’s 13 energy data startups you should watch in 2013.
According to early results of PG&E’s trial with smart thermostats from Honeywell and Opower, customers really like controlling the thermostat remotely with their iPhones. Remote control could prove to be one of the first smart grid applications that is a clear benefit to consumers.
Here’s what I think have been the top 10 best, and the top 10 worst, things that have landed on the cleantech scene in 2012. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
Opower has quietly been amassing serious reach with utilities, including crunching energy data from 50 million households and plans to be able to save its customers 2 terawatt hours by the end of 2012.
Are big data, analytics, and machine learning the answers to reducing the energy consumption of our homes? Yep, according to newly-emerged startup Bidgely that’s backed by Khosla Ventures. In an exclusive interview, Bidgely’s CEO gives GigaOM the details about what it’s been up to.
Researchers are taking a nod from Internet leaders and using big data mining techniques to quickly calculate the carbon footprints of products. New software like this can enable companies to calculate the carbon footprints of products using non-expert employees and for less cost.
How to connect and influence consumers’ energy use habits with big volumes of smart grid data? Making data interesting, of course. But that’s easier said than done. DJ Patil, a data scientist extraordinaire at Greylock Partners and previously at LinkedIn, doled out some tips.
Facebook’s social platform will increasingly be focused on sustainability, if the company’s new manager of energy efficiency and sustainability, Bill Weihl, has anything to say about it.
Clean technologies are ready for investments. Are the traditional investors in VC and project finance willing to change their approach?
A four-year-old startup called PlotWatt has developed smart algorithms that can crunch energy data down to the appliance level to determine which of your household devices is sucking up more than its fair share of power.
Here’s a weird bit of energy data courtesy of energy software startup Opower: people that use Yahoo email spend $110 more a year on electricity — or 11 percent more — than Gmail users. Why?
There are expected to be over 9 billion on the planet by 2050 and you can expect that to strain the world’s resources like energy, water and food. But big data tools will be able to help organizations track and attempt to solve this problem.
In an interview at the Verge Conference last week, Opower’s founder and a Senior Advisor to the White House discuss why energy data should be open, how utilities will deal with the influx of big data and how government can help. Check out the video:
Many have predicted a “big data tsunami” that will transform the energy sector and open an entirely new market for smart-grid data analytics. Stepping into the fray is the next generation of smart-grid companies, which this report profiles. It is a diverse group that includes a cast of characters from relatively mature players like Tendril to very young companies like GridMobility. Many would say they don’t need smart meters to implement their products but rather that a smart meter makes their products much more effective. Smart meter or not, what has changed is that utilities are becoming proactive and are looking at computing and data as an opportunity to improve load balance, better address outages, and shape consumer behavior to save energy.
The massive amount of data that is emerging from connected, digital systems, is fundamentally changing everything, from Internet search to entertainment, to disease management, to energy consumption. Here’s 10 case studies that highlight the power of big data.
Analytics and big data tools will remake energy in 2012, from helping curb energy consumption, to reducing energy loss, to adding in more clean power to the grid. Here’s 10 ways this will happen:
Energy software company Opower says it will send its 25 millionth energy data report to a utility customer by the end of January and will likely hit the 75 million mark sometime in 2012.
The world of home energy reports for utility customers just got heated. Opower has filed a complaint against Efficiency 2.0, claiming the company infringed on Opower’s copyrighted home energy reports. Efficiency 2.0 denies the claims.
Tech companies so far have stumbled when it comes to getting people to be mindful of their energy use and conserve. But startup Changers thinks it’s come up with a better idea: sell mobile solar chargers and create a social networking around energy credits and shopping.
Facebook, energy software startup Opower, and the NRDC plan to launch a Facebook social energy application next year that they think could be “the world’s largest social energy community.”
Fancy dashboards that can monitor and control a home’s energy consumption haven’t really caught on. But maybe that’s because the dashboard is the wrong device. Increasingly companies building home energy tools are focusing on making software for connected thermostats.
Earlier this year we reported that energy software startup Opower was considering adding a home energy device to its portfolio. A half year later here’s Opower’s first foray into hardware: the company announced it has partnered with building automation giant Honeywell to sell a connected thermostat.
Calling all do-gooder developers looking for your next opportunity. Introducing the Cleanweb Hackathon, a developer contest and event, which will take place on the weekend of Sept. 10 and 11th in San Francisco.
The ability to analyze enormous amounts of data and use that to better target an ad, make a new drug or any number of other lofty goals is talked about constantly, but what about harnessing Hadoop for the rest of us?
Opower, a startup using software and big data tools to help utility customers reduce their energy consumption, is expanding outside the U.S. for the first time, and will be working with U.K. energy company First Utility.
They’re dropping like flies: the big Internet companies’ online energy tools. Last week, it was Google pulling the plug on PowerMeter, and this week, it’s RIP for Microsoft and its Hohm energy tool. Here’s my assessment of 5 reasons why Microsoft Hohm didn’t take off.
On Thursday morning, GE will host a day-long event where it plans to announce the latest winners of its $200 million smart grid challenge that are specifically focused on energy use in the home.
On the heels of Silion Valley startup iControl securing a deal to provide its software for Comcast’s new home security and energy management service, iControl announced that it has raised another $50 million in a Series D round from its long list of high profile investors
Will huge returns on social media investments — like Groupon, LinkedIn or Pandora — help make up for underperforming greentech investments in a venture firm’s portfolio? If so, perhaps this gives firms time — and wiggle room — to keep up their cleantech investing.
Energy data startup OPower says its software will be able to save one terawatt hour of energy from U.S. homes by the end of 2012. That’s equivalent to the energy consumed by 100,000 American homes for a year, and is worth $100M in energy savings.
Who needs smart meters when you’ve got broadband? Two announcements last week — EcoFactor’s energy-saving data and Comcast’s Xfinity Home Security launch — raise that question. If the broadband channel to home energy takes off, it could leave smart meter–dependent home energy startups in the dust.
EcoFactor, a startup that uses big data tools to act as a new brain for connected thermostats, says on average its services can reduce a person’s home energy use by 17 percent compared to a programmable but non-optimized thermostat.
While state and federal legislators are drafting rules to make sure consumers have prompt and secure access to their energy consumption data, consumers themselves are largely unaware of the tools available to manage their own energy. That’s according to a survey out from CEA.
How do we get consumers to use less energy and to use it smarter? State and local governments might be able to incentivize smart grid rollouts, but to ensure adoption, utilities will need to educate consumers and giving them the right tools, such as peak pricing.
Can Opower fix utilities smart meter customer relation woes? The startup, which uses data about energy consumption to modify consumer behavior, has two new clients — Pacific Gas & Electric and Baltimore Gas & Electric — that have faced issues with smart meters and consumers.
It’s time for the home energy management firms that have been leading the pack to bulk up. Home automation company Control4, is in the process of raising $25 million and has closed $15 million of that round, according to a filing.
While energy management startup Tendril announced a partnership and web services this week, the company also quietly confirmed with me that it won’t be selling its sleek “Vision” energy dashboard. It’s the beginning of the end of the stand alone high-end home energy device.
The annual smart grid event Distributech kicked off in San Diego Tuesday morning and — as expected — it’s unleashed a whole series of news from smart grid-focused firms. Here are 10 trends and news bits out of Distributech this morning.
Hug Energy, which had developed an application for computer energy management, is shutting down. CEO Marcus Tallhamn made the announcement in a blog post and an email to users, citing weak investor interest. It’s a sign of how crowded the energy management space has gotten.
Smart grid data analytics, or software and services that can mine power grid data, will grow from a $356 million market to $4.2 billion by 2015, Pike Research predicts.
Home energy efficiency startup OPOWER has raised $50 million as it seeks to quadruple its customer base and add new features to its age-old, paper report-based customer outreach.
General Electric and some high-flying venture capital partners have named 12 winners of the first $55 million of a $200 million “ecomagination challenge” they launched this summer. The list is full of some already well-funded companies, including several that GE is already investing in.
Pacific Gas & Electric has picked two companies to help it aggregate, analyze and present energy data to its customers outside of smart meter channels. Might one of them be OPOWER?
Tendril, the venture-backed home energy management startup, has raised yet more funding and acquired a startup focused on software for behavioral energy efficiency. I’d been wondering how Tendril would try to maneuver in the difficult and increasingly competitive space.
What if the most successful home energy-saving technology ends up being the one people have to opt out of? Utilities can sign customers up for programs automatically, unless they actively choose not to join. Companies targeting the home energy management space should remember this powerful tool.
Tools that can be used to monitor and manage energy consumption with homes and buildings.
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment are always good tools to change people’s behavior. This morning Microsoft added in a “score” functionality to its energy management tool Hohm which gives a Hohm score to every address entered based on how energy efficient the building is.
The last time you encountered WeatherBug — the brand name of a company that has 8,000 weather tracking stations across the U.S.…
We’ve yet to delve too deeply into all of the fisticuffs surrounding the suit filed by a Bakersfield, Calif. resident against utility…
Despite all the new high tech ways to help us curb our energy consumption, only about a quarter of us are expected…
I am downloading Windows 7 Ultimate RTM as we speak, with the intention of installing it on the HP Mini 5101. I…