I recently had the chance to head down to one of our client sites and take some photos of KyotoTV ‘in action’ – displaying live data to building occupants, raising awareness of usage and making energy more visible in the building.
It’s always nice to see things on the big screen so take a look at a couple of photos:
You will see from the photos that the KyotoTV background is a light grey that was due to the cloud and snow that day. We have found that small features such as getting the latest weather conditions and having them as part of KyotoTV makes it seem that much more ‘real’ to people.
Look out for a full KyotoTV case study coming soon.
-Aaron
PS. Ignore the mouse cursor left in the middle of the screen, a person, who wishes to remain anonymous, forgot to move it!
Happy New Year to everyone out there! We wish you a very prosperous 2010.
January is shaping up to be a very busy month for us but hopefully we'll have time for a couple of blog posts as well.
-Aaron
After recent announcements by the UK government, the media is awash with news on smart meters, the smart grid and how the landscape of the UK’s energy market will totally change by 2020. So, what does this all mean? Well, a smart meter shows you how much energy you are using at any one time and can provide details on how much usage is costing. This will mean the end of estimated billing as exact current and historical usage will be logged accurately.
When smart meters become ubiquitous, suppliers and regional distributers will have a much better understanding of how much electricity is being used at any point in time. Gaining this insight into electricity usage using the technology of smart meters is part of the idea behind the smart grid - An ‘intelligent’ power grid, where electricity can be supplied to consumers more efficiently by communicating information between the grid and the meters. There is much more to the smart grid than the brief summary here, for more resources see the end of this article.
Everything we make is constantly evolving. We are always discussing the next cool feature we could add. However, every product has to start somewhere and learning lessons from guys like 37 Signals, we like to keep our product development process pretty simple. It normally starts off with a brain storming session, bouncing ideas around and ending up with some rough sketches. We go over the sketches and mock up the design and layout, without any functionality and have another look at what we end up with. We then review the features we want in version one and go away and produce it.
KyotoTV is no exception and I’ve included some screenshots here of the early development:
Now we know that not everyone is a tree hugging eco-warrior but, the majority of people are willing to do the small things to be a little bit greener. The Carbon Trust puts out a lot of material on energy efficiency and as a company interested in this area we are always keen to see the findings of their research.
One article in particular caught my attention, it talks about the fact that UK employees want to help their employers save money through energy efficiency – “78% (of employees) willing to be more energy efficient to save money.” How do you leverage this will to be greener - if energy use is ‘invisible’ to the occupants in a building, there is less of a feeling of responsibility towards being energy efficient. People do not always think about the consequence of their actions or inaction (leaving lights on etc). The solution is to make energy use more visible to provoke thought and action.
The article went on to point out “our survey reveals, employees want to do their bit and are increasingly seeing saving money around the workplace as part of their responsibility too. This could help most businesses save up to 20% on energy bills through low cost or no cost action on energy efficiency.” – Compelling evidence that empowering employees through awareness would lead to saving money and reducing the impact on the environment.
