Roger Nauth | November 6, 2008 at 1:16 PM 2 Comments

Greentech Innovations: Greenbox Offers Online Energy Management

Don't like being surprised when you open your utility bill? Or are you a utility company that wants to help customers scale back their energy usage? Energy management software company Greenbox Technology is certain it has some answers. Greenbox, founded by the creators of multimedia technology platform Flash, figures that if a little less than a third of us reduced our electric power consumption by 20 percent, we would save $8 billion on our energy bills. That's just the economic side. If you believe in the benefits of environmental stewardship and sustainability, you'd be happy about the 105 billion ton reduction in carbon dioxide each year from such an action and the associated avoidance of $10 billion in coal-fired power plant creation. I chatted with founder Peter Santangeli and Matthew Smith this past week to learn more and to prep for an upcoming Greentech Software panel session in which Santangeli will participate at our Greentech Innovations conference on Nov. 17 and 18. According to Santangeli, a former VP at Macromedia leading the engineering teams for the Flash and Breeze product lines, being involved "where the Internet would impact individuals next and would have much more personal impact" was a key motivator for the move to the green software arena. "We saw energy monitoring as a first step in that direction," added Santangeli. The Greenbox team also mentioned that most people don't know how much energy they use.

For residential customers, Greenbox offers a Web-based solution to help people track, understand and manage their home energy usage and environmental footprint. For utility customers, Greenbox provides an online interface for residential energy customers, helping them to manage their energy utilization and change their consumption habits.

The value proposition Greenbox offers is pretty straightforward -- know instantly how much energy you're using and what you can expect to pay rather waiting for the utility bill at the end of the month to find out. The advanced capabilities include visualization of your power use and offering up savings opportunities by eliminating unnecessary loads in the home. Greenbox also calculates a customer's carbon footprint based upon their energy usage profile. Finally, allowing for benchmarking against others -- a little healthy competition -- is part of the offering. The software allows you to assess your usage anonymously with similar residences.

Find out more at Greentech Innovations: End-to-End Electricity on Nov. 17 and 18 in New York.