This week Facebook, NRDC and OPower launched a Facebook application that is meant to bring the power of social media to household energy consumption.  Take a look at an explanation of the application at GigaOm.  It took me about 3 minutes to set up on Facebook.  While my utility is not participating, when I entered my estimated monthly electricity bill, the application did estimate my kWh usage.  I haven’t verified the accuracy of the calculator.  I have invited friends to participate.  I will keep you posted on how well the competitive effort works.  So far, I see no meaningful link to costs/savings, or any sort of competition around $.  The other potential problem is that it will only really be meaningful for me to compete with other apartment dwellers in NYC (naturally)– not so relevant to compare to people who live in Maryland, Texas, or Washington State because their housing stock, utility rates and weather (– energy usage and cost) will be different and difficult to compare.  So far, the OPower applications tells me that my consumption for March is higher than the national average… that surprises me for a small apartment like mine…. Stay tuned.

Back in graduate school (in the late 1990s), I worked on an EPA-funded program that provided residential households with comparison graphs of energy consumption based on their zip code.  Theoretically, customers could see how their consumption compared to their neighbors’.  We asked utilities to adopt the program and put the information on utility invoices.  The program was a bit ahead of its time.  In any case, I have always been intrigued about behavior and consumption and how to most effectively drive meaningful results.  This application may well be a step in the right direction.  In general, my view is that in order to create any behavior change, an application has to be easy to access, fun to use (dare I say “sexy”?), and tied to dollar savings.  What do you think?  Let us know.