California utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison are collaborating to deliver "Green Button" customer energy data to about six million California customers. By clicking on the Green Button, up to 13 months of past energy consumption data is instantly exported into customer- and computer-friendly standard formats. The data will be delivered in standardized file formats for easy export to other applications. According to a White House blog post, the expectation is that access to this information will inspire innovative consumer applications and devices from entrepreneurs, businesses and students.

The Green Button system is based on a developing standard Open Automated Data Exchange (Open ADE). The particular standard for that common format, known as Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI), was finalized in a 1.0 version in October 2011; the federal government wants to make it a national smart grid standard.

According to reports on blogs such as Earth2Tech and GreenTechGrid other utilities including Southern California Edison, Glendale Power & Light, Oncor and Pepco Holdings will announce that they will also offer the feature later this year.

A major step toward a standardized format for communicating actionable information on energy consumption to U.S. households has been achieved as the SGIP Governing Board voted to accept the third set of standards to emerge from the Priority Action Plan (PAP) teams.  The NAESB Energy Usage Information seed information model is the completed output for PAP 10.  The Board’s positive vote on January 28 signifies that these standards are now recommended for inclusion on the SGIP Catalog of Standards, where they will guide the development of an interoperable Smart Grid. Read more »