Since 2007, Opower has become a household name in the efficiency world -- evolving from a company offering basic paper-based energy reports into one of the hottest intelligent efficiency players in the residential sector.

With various mobile apps, a growing big data business and now a thermostat partnership with Honeywell, Opower is covering the entire tech landscape from software to hardware.

So what's the key to the company's growth and success in getting consumers to reduce $250 million worth of energy? It's not just inking deals with utilities and other leading companies. It's understanding the basics of behavioral science.

In the short TED Talk below, Alex Laskey, Opower's president and co-founder, explains the simple premise behind the company's energy reports: peer pressure.

"For the last five years, we've been running the largest behavioral science experiment in the world. And it's working."

 Watch the video for an explanation of the research behind Opower's model. (You can hear even more about what Opower is up to at our Avant EE conference in July.)