The Administration announced today that nine major utilities and electricity suppliers will commit to providing more than 15 million households access to data about their own energy use with a simple click of an online “Green Button.” These utilities have agreed to base their Green Buttons on a common technical standard developed in collaboration with a public-private partnership supported by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
"The Green Button Initiative will help consumers monitor and manage their energy consumption. We believe that engaging consumers as a crucial stakeholder in the process will help us achieve national energy policy goals, deliver important societal benefits and realize important advancements in the utility value chain," said Connie Durcsak, UTC President and CEO, in a press release supporting this project. Read more »

The UCA International Users Group is considering the creation of a community to support the "green button" initiative that is supported by the White House (see related Insight article). According to Erich Gunther, UCA International chairman, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Green Button initiative is moving forward very quickly.

Gunther stated that the Green Button is at once a concept, a policy, a brand and a collection of technologies and creates both opportunities and challenges for utilities and their customers. UCA will likely vote next week to move forward with the creation of a Green Button support mechanism. Those utilities interested in participating should contact UCA International or Klaus Bender at UTC. You will be provided relevant information when it is available.

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.