Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) provides energy services to 15 million people and covers 70,000 square miles across Northern California. PG&E was one of the first utilities in the U.S. to make Green Button Data available to its customers with the launch of Green Button Download in December 2011 and launched its first publicly accessible API, Share My Data, based on Green Button Connect My Data, in March 2015. Today, PG&E's Share My Data platform is accessible to all customers to share their electric and gas interval usage and billing data in an ongoing manner to companies of their choice. PG&E's Share My Data platform now offers 50 registered third-party Green Button applications with approximately 55,000 Service Agreement ID's (SAIDs) being shared on a given day. The applications are being leveraged by a variety of companies, including: app developers to help customers understand and manage their energy usage; solar providers to help size PV installations and calculate more accurate financial forecasts, non-utility demand response providers to bid resources into the CAISO market; and with energy efficiency contractors and lenders to provide loans to customers which can be repaid via their PG&E bill.
MaRS Discovery District (MaRSDD), the Ontario Ministry of Energy, and utilities London Hydro and Hydro One have been working hand-in-hand to bring the benefits of the Green Button standard to electricity customers in Ontario, Canada, since November, 2012. Following the completion of successful Green Button pilot projects with London Hydro and Hydro One, over 3 million electricity consumers in Ontario now have access to their Green Button energy usage data. Ontario's 2016 Climate Change Action Plan now calls for expanding Green Button to enable data access from electricity, natural gas and water utilities from across the province. In this new article, "Unlocking Innovation Through Energy Data Standards," Ron Dizy, managing director of the Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) at MaRSDD, discusses the benefits of standardized energy data, key findings from the Ontario pilot projects, and from subsequent stakeholder consultations. A key finding was that commercial-sector customers, in particular, have a critical need for standardized access to consumption and billing data to meet requirements for reporting, internal benchmarking, and consumption reduction. Also in the article, the AEC has produced a new video, which well-describes the commercial sector drivers for Green Button. For key findings from the Ontario Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) Pilot Program, see the final report; and for Green Button CMD implementation lessons learned, see the industry adoption report, both included in the article.
Cielo Wigle Inc., based in Redmond, Washington, launched its plug and play smart home products for air conditioners/heat pumps, lighting and appliances at the Climate Expo, held 3-5 October in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Branded as Breez and Breezi (internal version), the Breezi smart controller enables split air-conditioner/heat pump manufacturers to easily convert their existing air-conditioner/heat pumps into smart appliances, allowing manufacturers to provide remote management and efficient control of cooling/heating to their customers. Cielo's Breez smart controller enables consumers to efficiently monitor and control their cooling/heating from anywhere. Cielo's new smart lights and smart outlets are branded as Lumi and Econi. Econi enables energy measurement of all connected appliances and real-time billing information. All Cielo products are managed through a single Cielo smart home mobile app for iOS, Android and web-based applications that leverages predictive algorithms and machine learning to learn customer behavior to maximize convenience and energy efficiency. See Cielo's new video. Cielo will be launching its smart home technology for the U.S. market at the AHR Expo in Las Vegas on 30 January - 01 February 2017, in booth C1689. Follow Cielo on Twitter: @CieloWigle.
