Wattzy.com: You Can Learn A Lot from Your Energy Bill

Wattzy is free service you can use to gather and see your home energy data, based simply on your utility bills.  What makes Wattzy special is that it can automatically keep your energy use up to date when you give it permission to look at your online utility bills -- if you have used Mint.com, you'll know there's a huge difference between getting a statement from a bank or credit card, and understanding it so you can take action.  Wattzy is Mint for your utility bills, and in the same way, by doing a little graphing, a little math, and a bunch of other cool stuff, all that data buried in your electricity and gas bills now is exposed to the light of day.

Energy Circle is big on measuring energy (perhaps you have noticed), so we're excited that Wattzy.com is doing the impossible: making it easy to understand your energy bills.  I don't think I can overstate how important this service could be.  Seriously, when was the last time you looked at your electricity or gas bill and walked away saying "Wow, turning off lights you're not using really works!" (or something...).  I guarantee, unless you're already diligently recording your utility bills in a spreadsheet (Paul, I'm thinking of you), Wattzy will tell you something you didn't already know.

How Wattzy Got Started

Alex Patriquin, Wattzy's founder told me how he got the idea for the project:

"...at the time and my electricity bill was sky high even though it was only me and 2 roommates in the apartment. We couldn't figure out why and, worse yet, we weren't really sure if the bill was abnormal. I'm a pretty data-driven guy and it was just so frustrating not to have an accessible benchmark for something so commonplace. Anyway, one day I was doing laundry in the basement and noticed that the washer/dryer for the whole building were connected to the electricity meter for my apartment. My roommates and I were paying for the whole building to do laundry. Not only that, but it was a coin-op washer/dryer, so we were effectively subsidizing our landlord to profit from this operation. After we moved out, losing hundreds of dollars, I knew there had to be a better way."

Alex also makes another good point:

"...it dawned on me that energy efficiency is often a better investment than the stock market. There is less risk and no taxes. Why don't more people invest in energy efficiency then? I still haven't figured this one out, but if it were my money on the line, I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable investing in energy efficiency if there were hard data available on energy savings and if someone I knew and trusted did it. That's exactly what Wattzy does."

Or perhaps we put this another way.  Would you rather get a $100 raise or save $100 on your utility bill?  If you pay tax on income (state, federal, FICA, Medicare) and that's 25% of your paycheck you're really only getting $75 of that raise.  And if a broker tells you the historical return on stocks is 8%, ask her if she can guarantee that return (and oh yeah, you pay taxes on that, too). 

On the other hand, an investment in energy conservation is a guaranteed, tax-free return.  Even if I had to pay $25 for a few efficient light bulbs, I would still be better off.  The return gets better as energy prices rise (which they most certainly will, sometime soon).  And that doesn't even account for the fact that there are a bunch of tax incentives, local rebate programs and other savings for efficiency improvements ... many of which are conveniently listed on Wattzy.

Less Is More (Especially When It's More)

At Energy Circle, we tend to focus on things like electricity monitoring, in greater and greater detail.  Wattzy provides the big picture with almost no effort or cost.  What's not to like?

And Wattzy also does your gas bill.  We're hoping that there will be energy monitoring solutions for gas that work like electricity monitors, but for now, nada -- Wattzy does gas now.  Unfortunately no oil or LPG yet.

In 2004 I began to realize that energy issues were likely the single biggest issue we'll face as a country and planet in the next few decades -- I wanted to do something for the planet.  I didn't realize at the time I would also be doing something (good) for my wallet.  It was then that my family and I started looking at our electricity bills every month, and tracking them as we made changes to how we used energy in our lives.  Through this simple exercise, we were able to reduce our household electricity use by about 40% over the course of several years.  Since then we have continued to find ways to reduce our expense, using several different electricity monitors.

But it takes a special kind of person (and by "special" I mean "crazy" to do this.  Paul, I'm thinking of you :-).

And now, with Wattzy I know that our continued efforts since then show that we have reduced our electrical consumption 18% for last month compared to the same period last year.  Here's out Wattzy chart for the year.  Pretty cool!

On to heating.  To be honest, we had thought that after insulating, replacing our old windows, caulking, replacing our gas burner, insulating our heat pipes, getting (and using) a programmable thermostat, and so on we had done what we could to reduce our gas consumption.  Last year, before I was part of Energy Circle, I learned about this "energy audit" thing.

So I had an energy audit.  Whoa -- who knew that after all those repairs and expense, our house still leaked like a sieve!  Our new boiler was heating the outdoors more efficiently!

With minimal expense (thanks in part to a nice rebate from our gas provider, National Grid), I had the areas they missed in the first round of insulation filled, the sill of the house filled with foam ("air sealing"), and the attic insulation topped off.  I also knew exactly where to caulk, and how to seal some other big holes.

And with Wattzy, the payoff is evident now (sort of).  From October through May we used 816 therms of gas.  In the prior year, we used 923 -- 13% more gas used last year than this year.  Nice.

Wattzy lets you compete with other users (how cool is that?  I challenge anyone!).  You can Tweet or post to Facebook when your year over year results improve.  And Wattzy provides great resources for helping you take steps to save energy.

There are a lot of features I am looking forward to seeing in Wattzy.  It would be cool if it could figure out how much of your gas or electric use was from non-heating and/or non-cooling sources and separate that out.  For example, my water heater uses natural gas -- my savings due to home energy efficiency measures I took, such as caulking, insulating, and air sealing to make a tight house also included my hot water use -- our savings would have been bigger than calculated.  On the other hand, this winter was warmer than last winter, so I should have needed less heat so my savings might be smaller.  Also, Wattzy uses the data from the bill, but this depends on the billing period which can vary from month to month.  I would love to be able to add up total consumption over a specific period.  Oh yeah, I want it all!  Now, I say!

Can Wattzy Get My Energy Data?

Wattzy is starting slowly.  They currently know how read most major utility bills in the US and hundreds of municipalities.  Alex says: "In other words, if you want Wattzy in your area, tell your friends!"

Go check out Wattzy!