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Lowfoot: It Works
Date Posted: May 12, 2011, 3:00 pm | By: Steve Hammond
Deciding to start a business is both an exciting and frightening experience and, if you look at the odds (90% of all start-up businesses fail), it is probably one of the stupidest things a person can decide to do. However to build a business relying on an emerging market sector (smart grid) and a gut instinct could easily be classified as being flat out insane.
That’s why today marks a very significant day for Lowfoot. After a grueling number of months developing and redeveloping the application, engaging in some strategic marketing (a la shoestring), and seeing an exponentially increasing membership base, we have finally been able to begin analyzing the data and provide numbers for what our members have achieved. We are pleased to report that the numbers are in and they completely validate the Lowfoot method.
Here’s what we found: (Click to enlarge)
Our members lowered their usage 8.02% off their baseline. For our Toronto Hydro members this was 9.14% and for Powerstream members 7.62%. We have done some analysis on how these numbers break out over peak, mid-peak and off peak periods and how our members fared on each day of the week.
For detailed reduction graphs for our members from Toronto Hydro click here.
For detailed reduction graphs for our members from Powerstream click here.
What we are most excited about is that these reduction have been achieved with our simple email and text messaging system, interaction on the web site and, of course, payments to those people who have hit their targets. In the coming months we will focus on those members who are an incandescent light bulb away from making their targets and helping all of our members reduce during peak periods. To do this we will be introducing new tools and features that will make reducing a little more engaging and – dare we say it – fun.
We will also be opening Lowfoot up to new markets very shortly and we will be letting the world know about that.
Please stayed tuned and follow us on Twitter and ‘like us’ on Facebook.
Phil Playfair Steve Hammond
Co-founder Co-founder
* Note: We did not include Newmarket Hydro or Veridian Connections due to data availability problems and concerns about accuracy of the data from their smart meter data portals.
* IMPORTANT: This information is based on members who have joined Lowfoot and made us agents to collect their data according to our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use and Membership agreement. Lowfoot Inc. has no formal relationship with Toronto Hydro, Powerstream, Veridian Connections or Newmarket Hydro. The information contained in this report and on the graphs is limited to those customers of Toronto Hydro and Powerstream who have joined Lowfoot.
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3 Comments to Lowfoot: It Works
by Laura Winn Markham, ON
On May 13, 2011 at 8:56 am
I am a Lowfoot Member using Powerstream. Lowfoot helped our family to ‘wise’ up and it didn’t hurt a bit! Thanks!
by Peter Steele-Mosey
On June 9, 2011 at 8:25 am
Interesting. Pretty dramatic results from (what I understand to be) a purely informational tool.
Some questions:
1. How was the impact of the device estimated?
2. How large is your sample.
3. What kind of control group did you use and how big was it?
by Phil Playfair
On June 9, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your comments. We are quite pleased with the results.
We don’t use a device so I am not sure how to answer question number one. We access the LDC or Utility’s or PUC’s smart meter data portal to acquire the smart meter readings and historical data.
Our measurement methodologies are proprietary and are part of our patent application and we typically don’t share them in as much as the patent process is public. We can disclose that we have been testing and sampling our data for over 9 months and we are quite confident in the numbers. We will be signing a contract with an Ontario LDC in the coming months. This partnership will allow us to deepen our analysis and further test our algorithms and methodologies.
I would like to clarify that Lowfoot is not purely an informational tool. We are engaged in the activity of buying and selling consumers’ electricity reductions. We believe that this is the key behind our member’s significant conservation success. In the coming weeks we will be announcing an enhancement to the Lowfoot trading engine which we believe will further solidify the conservation efforts of our members and encourage the participation of the private sector in negawatt and carbon trading.
I would also like to compliment the work done by Navigant for Hydro One. We found your analysis and conclusions to be very enlightening.
Thank you again for your interest and comments.