Facebook App Shows Local Energy Consumption

Maybe you're curious about how your energy bill stacks up against your next-door neighbor. 

Glendale Water & Power smart meter customers can now check out Opower at https://social.opower.com/, an application to help you monitor your water and power use and help reduce global carbon emissions. 

Residents can save money on energy bills by comparing energy consumption with neighbors. Communities can also have competitions and set goals to see who uses the least energy. 

Glendale's utility company is one of 15 energy companies in the U.S. using this application, including Burbank Water & Power and the City of Palo Alto Utilities in California. 

Energy efficiency improvements have the potential to deliver more than $700 billion in cost savings for the U.S. alone, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who partnered with Facebook and Opower. 

GWP decided to use Opower to help customers cut costs. 

“The Opower social energy app is a new tool for energy-conscious consumers to connect and share their knowledge,” said Glenn Steiger, GWP’s General Manager, in a prepared statement. 

Here are some features included in the app:

• Compare Energy Use to Similar Homes: People are able to benchmark their home energy use against a national database of millions of homes. All benchmarking will be done on an aggregate level, ensuring complete data privacy.
• Compare Energy Use Among Friends: People are able to invite friends to compare their energy use against their own, show how energy efficient they are, and share tips on how to improve.
• Publish Conversations About Energy to the Facebook Newsfeed: People are able to share information about their energy use, rank, group participation, and tips.
• Group Development – Cooperation and Competition: Communities of people are able to form teams to help each other achieve collective goals, as well as compete against other groups.
• Automatically Import Energy Data: Customers of participating utilities, such as Glendale are able to import their energy data into the application automatically, if they so choose. (Customers from utilities that are not participating will also have the option to input their energy usage into the app manually.)