How to take 100,000 homes 'off the grid'

Don’t knock energy efficiency: done right, it could cut our power demands as much as taking 100,000 homes off the grid every year.

That’s what San Francisco-based energy management software firm Opower has set out to do. It says it aims to reduce overall energy consumption in the US by a full terawatt-hour — that’s 1 billion kilowatt-hours   — by 2012 through the use of its software platform for utilities.

Opower says 1 terawatt-hour is the equivalent of taking 100,000 average US homes “off the grid” for a full year, and could save $100 million in energy costs. It also surpasses the rate at which power is generated by the entire US solar industry.

The company is more than a third of the way toward its goal at the moment, having saved more than 380 million kilowatt-hours of energy through more than 30 live utility deployments.

“The future of home energy management hinges on our industry’s ability to deliver measurable energy savings to all consumers, not just those with access to high-tech devices or funds to make substantial changes to their homes,” says Alex Laskey, president and founder of Opower. “Information-based energy management programs are designed to engage all customers and help them make the level of investment in energy efficiency that makes sense for them. This customer-centric approach is the key behind the large-scale savings we’ve achieved to date, and gives us the opportunity to continue the conversation with millions of consumers, helping them manage their energy consumption on an ongoing basis.”