Social media has changed the lifestyle of humans recently. The way people share and communicate has changed a lot since dark blue (I mean Facebook) and light blue (I mean Twitter) invaded our lives.
Integration of life with these media outlets has become tighter than yesteryears and as a result a company has rightly taken a smart and productive initiative which makes use of this generation “sharing” technology.
Opower, a U.S based company has created a platform where people can track their electricity use and share this information with their friends. This app can be logged in directly with a Facebook account and users can directly connect their utility accounts with this app so that it automatically shares power bill statistics with friends whom you opt to share.
Right now 16 utilities in the U.S are participating in this program and the user’s utility information (in terms of KW/H usage) is directly shared in their FB timeline. If one cannot connect their account they can also manually enter their bill in the app. This seems to be a ridiculous idea, but research has shown that this shared information encourages and motivates people to become more energy aware.
“Facebook was designed to enable people to connect, share and multiply their impact,” said Marcy Scott Lynn, Facebook Sustainability. “This app is a powerful, easily accessible way for people on Facebook to do just that, inspiring conversations about really important topics – energy and the environment – that might not otherwise have taken place.”
This app not only shares data but does one step more. It encourages users to share tips and ways that one can reduce power consumption. It also compares your bills with “energy efficient” bills so that you can see the scale of difference and be more aware of your power consumption.
The company feels that if users were able to reduce their power bills 1% through this process the annual energy bill of U.S will reduce by $1 Billion USD.
You can reach the app from here. There also an option to compare your results without logging with FB.
P.s I have checked my home bill and found its energy efficient, how about you?
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