Congratulations to Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries and Phillip Torrone of Make Magazine, whose innovative "Tweet-a-Watt" was recently announced winner of Core 77 & Greener Gadgets design competition. We are thrilled to see that a new tool for measuring and sharing energy data came out the winner. Relying on the sound principle that measurement leads to knowledge and curtails usage, their contribution tacks Twitter communication distribution onto the well-established appliance measuring skills of the Kill-A-Watt electricity monitor. (We're big fans of twitter. You can follow me at @EnergyCircle and Peggy at @PeggyInToronto).
Kill-A-Watt is a sound choice, and is our favorite (and best selling) single appliance monitor. By giving the Kill-A-Watt capacity to send Twitters about usage, the "Tweet-a-Watt" is pressing a contextual approach. Would you work harder to save energy if all your friends knew how much you were using? The approach works for Weight Watchers, and we think it might work here, too.
Would you unplug the toaster if your friends knew it was burning up watts while you were at work, and it was languishing on the counter? Maybe. The challenge, of course, is getting beyond a single appliance or group of them tied together in a single power strip. Think of the power of letting your friends know how much electricity your entire household uses. (While it's great to lose that flab under your arms, why not go for a whole body fitness approach?). Whole house electricity monitors like TED, The Energy Detective, provide even more opportunities to gain information and cut back, by providing data about the cost, usage, and waste of electricity throughout your household. Hacking them for Twitter data distribution....well, we're looking into it.
Hats off to Limor and Phillip for presenting their innovative, viral energy-efficiency device as an open source submission, a tactic that generously invites innovation, and may yet lead to a whole house monitor tweeter. Stay tuned.
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