Wattwatchers

Presentation to ‘Knowledge is Power’ panel session at A2SE Summer Study in Sydney

wattwatchers — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:49:27 +0000

Our sustainability and community networks director Murray Hogarth joined a panel session at the Alliance to Save Energy Summer Study in Sydney (February 27-March 1, 2013) and immersed himself in three whole days of energy efficiency and decentralised energy.

Murray’s slides form his presentation to the ‘Knowledge is Power’ session on the first day of the conference is attached (click on ‘Panel Presentation’ below), and you can see the whole program HERE.

Panel Presentation

Our ‘Smart Grid for Consumers’ into shortlist for GE ecomagination challenge for Oz & NZ

wattwatchers — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:19:50 +0000

The team at Wattwatchers are very happy to be shortlisted for the GE ecomagination challenge down under, covering Australia and New Zealand, with our entry ‘The Smart Grid for Consumers’.

The formal name of this innovative contest, which began in the US, is the GE ecomagination Challenge Australia & New Zealand: Low Carbon Solutions.

Our proposal is based on the capabilities of our core Auditor range of energy management devices (pictured), which empower consumers with accurate, real-time electricity data independently of utility metering systems.

The Auditor3

The inside word we hear is that the Australasian contest has been very competitive, with GE and its partners still working through a shortlist of 35 to come up with their target of 5 winners.

Up for grabs are 5 prizes of $100,000 each plus possible venture capital investment totalling up to $10 million. So it’s not too shabby in these tough times.

You can see the full shortlist and more information HERE.

Australian Cleantech Newcomer With ‘Home Grown’ Smart Energy Management Solution

wattwatchers — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:34:23 +0000

How often do you hear of a technologically complex new electronic device with global applications for a vast mass market – in this case smart energy management – being invented from scratch, assembled, proved up and launched in Australia?

That stuff happens in California’s Silicon Valley, doesn’t it? Or out of the hi-tech industrial conglomerate laboratories of Germany, Japan, Korea and increasingly China, but not in Australia!

After more than three years of research, development and early deployment, Sydney-based Wattwatchers is now moving out of the backyard shed-cum-lab and going to market with its core product, the Auditor3® professional-standard energy management device.

Wattwatchers Auditor3

So what does the Auditor3® actually do? Wattwatchers CEO Chris Bean says that it is ‘real cleantech’* – small-sized to save resources, low-energy, battery-free, affordable and very smart – supporting renewable energy, distributed generation, demand management and energy efficiency.

‘It provides the foundation for monitoring and managing electricity use in homes and businesses of all sizes, completely independent of traditional energy utilities, with consumers gaining control of their own accurate data – in real time (5 second delay), operating standalone or in networks that are infinitely scalable,’ said Mr. Bean.

‘When bundled with one or more of a choice of software applications, householders and businesses can see what is happening with their electricity consumption at any time of the day or night, and take immediate action to help keep fast-rising electricity bills under control. (And you want to see your solar PV output too, then no problem!)

‘Data is transmitted wirelessly and is displayed and managed via computers, smart phones and tablets, existing routers and the Internet and cloud services. This allows householders and businesses to do energy management themselves, to share and compare with others, and to gain access to new-generation energy services.’

An early app partner, Australian company SOE Software which has bundled its Energy Tracker solution with Auditor3® as an ideal offering for the SME and SOHO (small office/home office) sectors, says: ‘This is one of the best pieces of energy monitoring hardware we have ever seen. Australian designed, it is a class 1 billing WiFi real-time meter that is DIN rail mountable and incredibly small and compact. Manufactured by the clever folks at Wattwatchers, it is a testament to fine engineering. Given its amazing ability to scale from home through to large corporate networks and its affordable price, we tip the Auditor3® to be a great success.’

*Wattwatchers via its parent company the Energy Saving Networks Group was among the 30 semi-finalists chosen from 104 entries in the Australian Cleantech Open Competition 2012.
About Wattwatchers
Wattwatchers is a fast developer of professional energy management solutions for the consumer side of the billing meter, helping to enable the distributed energy market. Based in Sydney, Wattwatchers is committed to delivering tools for the Energy Information Age with a light touch – low cost for consumers, low overheads for operation and low resource use for the environment:
• Value for money – inexpensive and cost effective systems
• Resource efficiency – small size units, no batteries, wireless installation, leverages existing communications infrastructure
• Minimal energy use –products are designed around low-power chipsets
• Data productivity – real-time communications with very low overhead protocols
• Reusability – products can be recovered, reprogrammed and reinstalled

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Media contact: Murray Hogarth 0417267235 or murray@wattwatchers.com.au
Sales/Investor contact: Chris Bean 0418640402 or chris@wattwatchers.com.au
Website: http://wattwatchers.com.au and @TheWattwatcher on Twitter

Wattwatchers getting it together with Energy Tracker – hardware + software = solution

Murray Hogarth — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:17:34 +0000

Here’s a little heads up.

Wattwatchers has been busy with the good folk at Energy Tracker coming up with a great new combo – a professional energy management solution that can bridge the larger Commercial and Industrial, SME, SOHO and switched on residential markets.

You can see what’s taken shape at http://energytracker.com.au

But before you pop off there, this is what software development manager Simon Manners, part of the brains trust behind Energy Tracker, says of the Wattwatchers Auditor3 energy management device: ‘The quality, unique innovative design and functionality of the Wattwatchers energy management devices has both surprised and delighted us, opening up new opportunities for our Energy Tracker software solution for SMEs and residential. After searching many years for a hardware vendor to deliver affordable billing class energy monitoring to integrate with our software, we can definitively tick the box now.’

In a just released update for its subscribers, the creator of Energy Tracker, SOE Software, also says: ‘Energy Tracker now supports a new innovative energy monitoring hardware device called the Auditor3. This is one of the best pieces of energy monitoring hardware we have ever seen. Australian designed, developed and manufactured it is a class 1 billing WiFi real-time meter that is DIN rail mountable and incredibly small and compact. Manufactured by the clever folks at “Wattwatchers” (http://www.wattwatchers.com.au) it’s a testament to fine engineering. Given its amazing ability to scale from home through to large corporate networks and its affordable price we tip the Auditor3 to be a great success. See our attached information brochure for more details (see below).’

Oh, and we at Wattwatchers reckon Energy Tracker is pretty damn clever too!

Energy Tracker and Auditor Hardware Solution

Dear PM, here’s how we can help save energy

Murray Hogarth — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:01:26 +0000

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard went on the front foot against rising electricity prices yesterday (August 7) in a widely reported speech to the Energy Policy Institute of Australia. The full speech is here.

With respect, there’s a lot that Wattwatchers technology can do to help change the power paradigm of the nation. Here’s some examples from PM Gillard’s speech:

PM – ‘Power bills have become the new petrol prices: not just an essential of life that always seems to be going up, but a vital commodity, where what we consume each day, or pay every quarter, seems beyond our control.’

WW – Putting consumers in control of their energy data is what we do.

PM – ‘People are paying a lot more – in some states, bills have gone up almost a thousand dollars in just a few years.Carbon price excluded, the average electricity bill went up by at least 48 per cent in the last four years. And ordinary businesses and households have been entirely uncompensated for these significant cost increases.’

WW – Armed with accurate, real-time data, savings of 15-25% are readily achievable.

PM – ‘As a recent AGL Energy review noted, while wealthier households can cut power costs through more efficient devices and solar panels, the poorest customers are exposed to the full cost of the increases.’

WW – Data that enables expert advice for high energy consuming, low income homes is a critical support opportunity to reduce bills pressure for the most needy.

PM – ‘At the bottom of all this is this economic reality: the market for supplying energy services in Australia needs to be more efficient. Take the current handling of peak power demands. One quarter of all retail electricity costs – more than $500 a year for a typical family – is spent to meet the costs of peak events that last for less than two days each year in total. One sixth of our national electricity networks – $11 billion in infrastructure – caters for peak events that last for barely four days per year. It’s like building a ten lane freeway – but with two lanes that are only used or needed for one long weekend.’

WW – Better data is the answer to the old business truth that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

PM – ‘A typical household in New South Wales is paying over a thousand dollars more for power every year compared to four years ago. And while due to a number of factors electricity demand is falling overall, families and pensioners are facing higher prices – even for those who are trying to do the right thing and cut their use.’

WW – There’s high value on offer if savings are unlocked via better informed consumers.

JG – ‘People need and deserve more choice and control. Already, the Federal Government has taken important steps to do this. But we want to put even more effective control in the hands of energy users, in the hands of working people, pensioners, owners of small businesses.’

WW – What can we say? ‘Even more effective control’ is what Wattwatchers does.

JG – ‘People should be able to use what they want when they want it and cut out expensive services they don’t need. Picture a smart phone app that means you can load the clothes dryer or a dishwasher before you leave home – and then turn it on when a low cost rate becomes available during the day. Or consider new technology so home air conditioners can switch themselves between high and low power mode, keeping a house cool while limiting use in high-cost periods of peak demand. Or in the same way many people use a travel agent or a mortgage broker to get the best bargains, small businesses could hire a clean energy adviser to analyse the data about their business’s energy consumption and find a better deal.’

WW – All good, we can help with this energy services future, independently of utility roll-outs and networks or in tandem with them.

JG – This is the future of the price of electricity in Australia.

More efficient investment.

More empowered consumers.

Real delivery from the States and Territories on our agreed priorities for change.

Much slower price rises over time.

WW – Bring it on!

JG – This is the future of Australian energy market reform.

New ideas and new understandings of the possibilities smart technology holds.

Energy services, not just electricity supply.

Clean generation, productive distribution, efficient use.

A rational, efficient price signal to cut carbon pollution.

Remaking the mix of power generation … and remaking the networks which deliver power services.

More renewable energy, more distributed generation … better management of demand.

WW – All doable!

JG – And in turn, this is a smart, affordable, clean energy future.

WW – We all want that, don’t we?

Wattwatchers semi-finalist in national cleantech competition

wattwatchers — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:58:35 +0000

10 July 2012 – Wattwatchers today announced it has been selected as one of the top 30 cleantech companies in the Australian Clean Technologies Competition 2012 which is part of the international Cleantech Open competition. http://wattwatchers.com.au

Australian CleanTech Managing Director John O’Brien said the top 30 had been selected from a record field of 104 entrants that represents the best in Australian clean technology innovation and opportunity.

Wattwatchers CEO, Chris Bean said, “This competition is a really welcome initiative for Australian cleantech developers. Our team at Wattwatchers is delighted with this early recognition as we bring our innovative, Australian-developed energy monitoring and management system to market.”

The Australian Clean Technologies Competition, part of the Cleantech Open based in the USA, was launched by the Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation Mark Dreyfus in May.

Dr Marc Newson, Cleantech Supplier Advocate said, “Going by the calibre of entrants for this year’s competition, Australian cleantech is extremely well placed to prosper at home and in the global market. Some of the technologies on display are world-class.”

A judging panel comprised of experts in innovation and commercialization included:

• Geoff Hoffman, Clayton Utz
• Marc Newson, Cleantech Supplier Advocate
• David Clark, Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick
• Paul van Bergen, KPMG
• Ken MacLeod, Scoria Macleod
• Ben Wright, ATP Innovations
• Andrew Pickering, Cleantech Ventures

The 30 semi-finalists were chosen from a national field of entrants across the spectrum of clean technology activity, which includes transportation, smart power, green grid, energy storage, green building, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and air water and waste management.

The semi-finalists will join the Cleantech Business Accelerator Program, which includes individual mentoring to help with the development of their business plan; an intensive mentoring workshop; and the submission of a final business plan.

Up to six companies will then be selected as Finalists and will receive additional advice and introductions.

The Australian winner will be announced at an Investment Showcase and Gala Dinner in October 2012.

The winner will be funded to represent Australia at the international Global Cleantech Open Competition in the US in November 2012. All of the finalists will be invited to join the Australian delegation attending this event.

About Wattwatchers www.wattwatchers.com.au Wattwatchers® is a market transforming technology that converges energy and IT to enable large-scale demand-side participation. It unlocks energy-use data on the customer side of the meter, in real-time, at low cost, and independent of utility metering. Access to these data allows consumers to control their rapidly rising bills over smartphones and PC’s, enables new forms of energy services to flourish based on aggregation or profiling, and community-based ‘energy saving networks’ to form and trade on collective market power.

About the Australian CleanTech Open www.cleantechopen.com.au
The Competition is an initiative of the Gillard Government’s $58.4 million Buy Australian at Home and Abroad initiative, and is supported by Enterprise Connect, Commercialisation Australia, CSIRO and Austrade. The competition is being managed by Australian CleanTech a private research and advisory business.

About Australian CleanTech www.auscleantech.com.au
Australian CleanTech facilitates and delivers Australian Clean Technology projects on behalf of both investors and project proponents.

In addition, Australian CleanTech provides services to Government agencies to help stimulate investment in the Cleantech industry. To deliver these services Australian CleanTech uses its extensive Cleantech research database.

Australian CleanTech also provides access to the ACT Australian Cleantech Index. The emerging Cleantech sector covers a range of growth industries that will move the concept of sustainable living from theory and aspiration to a practical reality.

Through a range of publication and articles, Australian CleanTech provides educational resources to help raise the awareness of the sector.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Murray Hogarth, Director of Sustainability and Community Networks, Wattwatchers Pty. Ltd. Email murray@wattwatchers.com.au and mobile 0417 267235

Living with real-time electricity data – worth a peek!

Murray Hogarth — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 01:37:35 +0000

Watching your daily watts may not be everyone’s cup of tea. And I have a kettle that goes on the gas stovetop when I want a cuppa anyhow.

That said, however, it’s amazing what having real-time data on electricity use literally at your fingertips tells you about how those nasty quarterly power bills come about. When you have a household of six, there can be a lot of energy use going on!

Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week and appliance by appliance, it suddenly becomes easy to understand the consequences of every flick of the switch … and when you forget to turn things off as well.

Oh look, that’s the distinctive signature of the clothes dryer, which was turned on around 11.09, and off again about 11.23 (electricity use surged from 1663 watts to 3631 watts as soon as the dryer came on).

When you have the data – cause and effect – in real-time it makes responding right then and there easy. Getting a three-monthly or even monthly retrospective on your utility power bill just can’t compare.

There’s another one, with bathroom heat lamps (left hand side of graph image) being switched on around 11.31 – first 2 lamps, then 4 lamps – and then turned off again a minute or so later. Two lamps took the graph from 1626 watts to 2208 watts, then 4 lamps bumped it up 2785 watts, before it fell back to 1628 watts when all 4 lamps were turned off.

On the right hand side, you can see the pool pump being turned off around 11.36, with electricity use falling from 1693 watts to 792 watts.

Tell your kids the power bill’s high for the past quarter and you’ll get nowhere. Show them what just happened when they left the heat lamps on after spending way too long in the shower, and you’re in with a chance of getting some positive engagement.

There’s a lot more, of course. Here’s the vacuum cleaner in action, coming on around 14.29 after a false start a few minutes earlier (the tube was blocked).

That’s an everyday household consumer perspective.

From a business point of view, say as a new-generation energy services provider looking to help householders and businesses save energy, and also influence when electricity is used to help with peak-load challenges, real-time data online is a game changer.

Perhaps you’re a solar PV installer and want to share visibility about performance with your customers. Yep, we can do that, and here’s what solar PV generation mapped over household electricity use looks like on a nice, sunny early autumn day in Sydney.

Welcome to the energy information age, delivered by Wattwatchers, where you can have your electricity information on your computer, smartphone or tablet – where you want it, whenever you want it, and on display independent of your power utility.

What will you do with accurate, real-time energy data?

Real data can transform smart energy use funding programs

Murray Hogarth — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:57:53 +0000

If smarter energy use for a clean energy future is what you want, how important is accurate, readily available and well-targeted data?

Hold that thought.

The Australian Government is busy creating a whole new suite of acronyms in the domain of energy saving, with a funding pool of $340 million up for grabs.

It’s great news for energy efficiency advocates, and if done well will help prime the pump for energy saving for years to come, with Round 1 projects likely to start in the second half of this year and potentially run through to 2016.

Around the nation, local councils, community groups, non-profits large and small, industry associations, professional institutes and even some for-profit energy services players are doing their numbers – working out how to bid for a slice of the Clean Energy Future funding pie.

There’s EEIG – the Energy Efficiency Information Grants program, with total funding of $40 million, with grants in the range of $100,000 to $1 million. It’s all about education, aimed at SMEs and community organisations, with industry associations, professional institutes and non-profit organisations eligible to apply. Round 1 closes on March 16.

Then comes CEEP – the Community Energy Efficiency Program, with $200 million aimed at non-residential energy saving projects by local councils and community organisations, in a wide range from $20,000 to $5 million. Round 1 closes on March 23.

Finally, there’s LIEEP – the Low Income Energy Efficiency Program, which starts as a call for competitive ‘expressions of interest’ for trial projects in a funding range of $1 million to $10 million. It’s aimed at groups of loca and state governments, community welfare organisations and energy companies. Round 1 closes March 16.

The common tagline for the EEIG/CEEP/LIEEP combo is ‘smarter energy use for a clean energy future’. Obviously this is territory of considerable interest to Wattwatchers, as makers of ‘tools for the Energy Information Age’.

Great energy use data may be handy for CEEP, and it’s easy to imagine an EEIG project that is based on real-time energy data from real homes and appliances delivered online – after all, seeing is believing. But it’s LIEEP where likely proponents are being challenged to make data capture integral to their bids.

The LIEEP factsheet says: ‘The program will collect and analyse data and information to assist future energy efficiency policy and program approaches.’

The LIEEP guidelines say: ‘As the program is based on trials, robust data collection and monitoring arrangements will be critical to the success of all projects.’ (See page 9 for Monitoring and data analysis requirements, which cover before, during and after.)

In early discussions with potential applicants for LIEEP, all are very focused on the data challenge. One ventured that the expectations in this regard are unprecedented, in an area where hard data sets are notoriously few and far between.

Perhaps you are looking for a whole new approach to smart energy use backed by real data. Can we help you?

How we’ll get to a national energy saving scheme, sometime

Murray Hogarth — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:27:55 +0000

Having recently attended an official briefing for the proposed National Energy Saving Initiative (NESI), a prediction: We’ll all be waiting quite a while for the single most sensible and important clean energy future reform still undone in Australia.

For mine, a market-based national energy efficiency scheme with tradable certificates makes plenty of sense economically and environmentally. Getting one, however, will be caught up in the political timetable of 2012-13, as well as classic federal-state tussles and the bureaucratic logjam of launching carbon pricing from this July 1 (Clean Energy Future scheme). This is the low down for NESI:

The Australian Government is not formally committed to a national scheme, as yet, it’s only investigating one. But there is a hefty Issues Paper, a joint working group of the climate change and energy departments in Canberra, and a multi-stakeholder external advisory group. The path also is being cleared via the draft Energy White Paper released late last year, and the Government cites carbon pricing, renewable energy and energy efficiency as the three core elements of its climate strategy.
Likely (but technically unofficial) major objectives for NESI include reducing electricity bills, through actual energy saving and also peak demand management; a social equity outcome of supporting low-income households, which are especially vulnerable to higher energy prices; and greenhouse gas abatement.
If the Government does embrace the idea, and can tightly describe a scheme’s main elements, it will still have to get it past a rigorous Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) process – with detailed cost-benefit analysis – before its being adopted as a firm policy commitment. If all goes well, the RIS could be completed by the end of 2012.
Assuming the RIS is positive, you may be thinking the Government could then implement a NESI, but not on your life. Then it would have to negotiate with the states and territories through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), starting with the Standing Council on Energy and Resources, in the first half of 2013.
This is where the harmonisation hitch comes in. NSW, Victoria and South Australia already have their own energy saving schemes, and the starting point for a national scheme is that it would replace them in a good-for-all fusion. But harmony between states has never been a strong point of the Australian federation.
Already, the Liberal-National Party Coalition governments in NSW and Victoria have agreed (in mid-December 2011, see article from The Australian newspaper) to work together on harmonising their respective energy efficiency schemes, among other things, at least in part because they aren’t completely happy with COAG. No one really knows what that means for a NESI.
There’s also the not-so-minor matter that the Labor Government in Canberra is a minority one, on shaky electoral ground, may not run full-term into the second half of 2013, or even if does get that far, could lose the subsequent election. So assuming it goes to the polls with NESI as part of its policy platform, that yet may count for little.
On the brighter side, common sense suggests that any future Government would support some form of major energy efficiency initiative, given that the target of a 5% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (on Australia’s 2000 baseline) by 2020 – which is supported by both of the major political blocs – will be very hard to reach without lots of the low-cost abatement offered by saving energy.
So, it may well take an election to confirm the fate of NESI, or some alternative model, as well as whether the carbon pricing scheme is retained as Labor (plus some Greens and Independents) wants, or dumped as the Coalition promises.

Even if everything falls into place, it’s hard to imagine a NESI in operation before mid-2014. Good thing some state-based schemes are already in place and are being expanded, because there’s lots of energy saving that can be done, plenty of public and business concern about rising electricity prices, and little if anything to be gained from inaction.

If you want to have some input on NESI, you have until February 17th to make submissions on the modelling for the potential scheme, and until February 27th to respond to the Issues Paper. Help is needed to secure the best possible outcome, so don’t hold back.

BTW: Running consultation on the NESI looks a lot less scary than doing it for the Murray Darling Basin water plan. No riots or report burnings have been observed, at least not yet.

Wattwatchers announcement – new website launched, as you can see!

wattwatchers — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:11:18 +0000

Accurate customer-side energy management tools now come with WiFi communications, networking via the Internet and a ‘light touch’.

Sydney-based technology developer Wattwatchers launched its new website today (January 30^th, 2012), showcasing its range of low-cost, Class 1-accurate and real-time energy management devices.

The Wattwatchers system enables ‘energy saving networks’ for both residential and commercial settings, and also offers commercial sub-metering that is ‘uncomplicated, unwired and uncostly’.

The target market includes a wide range of energy services companies, progressive energy retailers, corporate and community-based networks, micro-grids, and government and academic research and demonstration projects.

Wattwatchers is committed to delivering tools for the Energy Information Age with a light touch – low cost for consumers, low overheads for operation and low resource use for the environment – with a focus on:

Value for money – inexpensive and cost effective systems
Resource efficiency – small size units, no batteries, wireless installation, leverages existing communications infrastructure
Minimal energy use –products are designed around low-power chipsets
Data productivity – real-time communications with very low overhead protocols
Reusability – products can be recovered, reprogrammed and reinstalled

The heart of the system is a Wattwatchers Auditor®, which comes in a range of models for commercial and residential applications, combining the functions of a power meter, an energy meter, a data logger and an Internet appliance.

When hardwired into electrical circuits, an Auditor® streams real-time data via WiFi to the Internet using existing local or home area IP networks, with data delivered simultaneously to local networks, externally-hosted cloud services and relay servers to support existing Building Management software or Mobile applications. Any number of Auditor® devices, from any location, can be networked as part of the system.