Newsletter | December 2016

December 7, 2016

in Newsletters,

Chairman's View |

Syed Mir, Chairman

The Green Button Alliance recently held its first annual board of directors election. We're pleased to announce Cengizhan Yenerim, Director, Demand Risk Management, at Think Energy (ENGIE Resources) was elected to serve in a two-year seat and Elena Lucas, CEO of UtilityAPI was elected to serve in a one-year seat. We welcome Cengizhan and Elena to our board and look forward to working closely with them as we guide the Alliance to fulfill the vision for Green Button and enable consumers and companies to access and securely share energy and water usage data to efficiently manage resource consumption.

As utilities around the world determine the best approach to make energy and water usage data available to customers, the benefits of the Green Button standard are clear and have been proven in North America. The Green Button standard enables utilities to provide a common, easily accessible data format, assures secure data exchange, supports value-added services and opens up the energy management applications and services market to utilities─all while enabling utilities to focus on their core business. In this issue, Green Button Alliance member, the Advanced Energy Centre (AEC), offers a new article (see below) that discusses the benefits of the Green Button standard, includes a new video highlighting the real-world benefits to large commercial customers and includes findings and reports from the successful implementation of the Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) pilot project in the province of Ontario, Canada. We encourage utilities contemplating customer data access initiatives to review these useful resources.

This month, we're also pleased to feature Personal BlackBox (PBB) in our "Member Spotlight." Read below to learn how PBB's new ecosystem platform and Greenr application uniquely enable consumers, energy companies and brands to securely share data and gain benefits.

This is truly an exciting time for utilities, service and application providers, and customers around the world. We look forward to working together to continue to demonstrate the value of Green Button as an open, unifying and secure methodology specifically designed to help the industry and their customers to efficiently access, share and benefit from energy- and water-consumption data.

─ Syed Mir, Chairman

Member Spotlight |

Personal BlackBox (PBB) is a New York City-based technology firm and a member of the Green Button Alliance.

PBB is a Corporation for Public Benefit - a corporate status that drives its commitment to the environment and society as a whole.

We are all about data and trust. PBB was founded by Haluk Kulin, former Global Brand Manager at Unilever for over a decade. Haluk saw the value of data to Unilever but also acknowledged that consumers were not necessarily seeing an individual and personal benefit to having their data used.

He considered: what if the consumer had a virtual "Black Box" where they could offer their data securely to brands in exchange for a benefit - money or offers for their engagement? He further considered: what if brands could gain more accurate data and develop a more-trusted relationship with their consumers?

What if an enterprise like an Energy firm, could share their consumers' data readily with them? What if in addition to this data share, valuable educational information could be shared to help them live a more-sustainable life?

These questions form the genesis for the PBB ecosystem platform - where consumers, energy firms and brands all gain benefit from data share, through our energy app called Greenr. The Greenr mobile app resides on the platform and enables the consumer to connect to their energy data and begin a series of consumer journeys that provide valuable information on how to live a more-sustainable life. Articles, blog posts, quizzes and surveys on the app all offer an engaging, enjoyable, and goal-oriented experience.

So how does each party in the ecosystem benefit? Consumers gain valuable information on how to live a more-sustainable life and earn offers and monetary rewards. Brands develop a more-trusting and accurate relationship with their consumers. Energy companies build more personalized relationships with their customers. PBB's ecosystem platform uniquely enables everyone - consumers, brands and energy companies - to benefit by sharing data in a trusted and secure manner!

PBB is a proud member of the Green Button Alliance and applauds their work to get energy data into the consumer's hands. Visit PBB at www.PBB.me. Follow PBB on Twitter at @PBBCompany.

Member News |

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 this 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 this final report; and for Green Button CMD implementation lessons learned, see this 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 new video here. Cielo will be launching its smart home technology for the U.S. market at the AHR Expo in Las Vegas on 30 January - 1 February 2017, in booth C1689. Follow Cielo on Twitter: @CieloWigle.

Events & Activities |

European Utility Week was held 15-17 November in Barcelona, Spain and brought together thought leaders from the European smart utility and solution provider community and attracted 12,000 attendees. GBA members Enel, Energyworx, the AEC at MaRSDD and Silver Spring Networks participated in the event. Enel's Livio Gallo, Head of Infrastructure and Networks Global Business Line, spoke on behalf of Enel as part of the opening plenary session and discussed the company's activities regarding digitization and convergence and creating a digital ecosystem for the future. As a Game-Changer Sponsor, Energyworx Founder Edwin Poot presented on the Evolving Customer and how to achieve insights using Scalable Context Enriched Energy Intelligence. Energyworx also made the GBA's new marketing brochure available and answered questions about Green Button data. AEC's managing director, Ron Dizy, spoke on the Smart Grid International Forum panel: Opportunity, Financial Model and Best Practices to Export in the World. Silver Spring Networks exhibited at both European Utility Week and at the co-located Smart City Expo World Congress where the company spoke on Business Ecosystems Enabling Innovation in Cities.

What's Next?

The Green Button Alliance will have a booth at DistribuTECH , the leading annual electric power transmission and distribution conference and exhibition, being held in San Diego, California 31 January-2 February 2017. If your company is interested in staffing our booth, which is centrally located in the middle of the exhibition hall, or is interested in providing Green Button collateral or in co-marketing activities, you're invited to join our Global Marketing Meeting today, 7 December, or contact our staff directly. Register for DistribuTECH here. GBA member, the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC), will hold its 2017 Consumer Symposium: "Beyond the Grid - Connecting Tomorrow's Consumers" co-located with DistribuTECH on 30 January; register here.

The Green Button Alliance is proud to be a supporter of the eighth-annual Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, which will take place 20-22 February 2017 in Austin, Texas. The summit agenda features leaders from utilities, states, and national regulators, telecom and security companies, retailers, and OEMs. The "Value of Energy Data" panel will be held on 22 February. Register to attend here and follow the event on Twitter at @SmartEnergySmt and #SmartEnergy17 and on the Smart Energy Insights Blog.

All members are invited to attend the Green Button Global Marketing Committee meetings that take place the first Wednesday of each month. The next meeting will be held today, 7 December. For the complete listing of meetings in which the Green Button Alliance is participating, see our teleconference and meeting calendar.

For a listing of current and upcoming events, including Smart Cities International Symposium & Exhibition (24-25 January), DistribuTECH (31 January-2 February), and Smart Energy Summit (20-22 February), please visit the Green Button Alliance's industry events calendar .