Hydro One, Canada’s largest power utility, recently completed a 500-home pilot project in which homeowners in five different Ontario cities were given indoor displays that allow them to track their electricity consumption in real time. They used technology from St. John’s, Newfoundland-based Blue Line Innovations, which I’ve written about before (I’m also testing out the product myself).

Check out my article in today’s Toronto Star for more details. The bottom line is that this study — the largest ever conducted in Canada – found an average 7 to 10 per cent reduction in electricity use over the course of a year, when compared to the same months and seaons in the previous year. This finding supports past studies, including one out of Oxford Unversity, that came to similar conclusions.

As for my own experience, I like the Blue Line product but the prototype I have been using doesn’t have a reset feature yet on the device that attaches to my outdoor electromechanical meter. After about a month of using the device it stopped providing readings from my outdoor meter for some reason. I couldn’t reset it to get it working again. I imagine this is just a glitch that will be fixed in commercial versions.

I personally see these as a great bridge toward smart meters, and a complement to smart meters, which on their own don’t come with indoor display units to let people see their usage behaviour. They may not be for everybody, but for those who are serious about conservation and want to reduce their electricity bills indoor display units offer the kind of “live” feedback that make it doable.

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