How to register to see your smart meter data with Smart Meter Texas

* Lowfoot Inc. has no formal relationship with Smart Meter Texas. Smart Meter Texas does not endorse Lowfoot Inc.. Lowfoot Inc. acts on behalf of its members, in accordance with our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Membership Agreement, independent of Smart Meter Texas.

If you have a Smart Meter Texas smart meter and would like to register to see your electricity usage data online (you must do this if you want to connect your usage data to your Lowfoot account), Here are the steps to do this if you are not already signed up to see your data online with Smart Meter Texas:

What you will need before starting:

1. Your Texas Electric Service Identifier (ESI ID). What is an Electric Service Identifier (ESI ID)?
2. The Meter Number you want to add to Lowfoot. This can be found on your last electric bill.

Here are the steps to get access to your smart meter data on the Smart Meter Texas portal.

1. When you are ready go to http://smartmetertexas.com

2. Fill in the information requested, including your Meter Number and ESI ID.

Now add your meter to Lowfoot. Sign in to your Lowfoot Account by going here . If you don’t yet have a Lowfoot account, take a few minutes and sign up in one step here.

Once you are logged into your Lowfoot account

Click on “My Meters”

Choose “Smart Meter Texas” from the drop down box

Enter the username you used for Smart Meter Texas where it says, “Utility Username:”

Enter the password you used for the Smart Meter Texas log in and we will store it securely.

Follow the remaining steps. If successful you have now connected your meter data to Lowfoot.

If you have any questions please feel free to email us at member.services@lowfoot.com and we’ll help you out.

Hypenotic – August 2011 Lowfoot Credit Sponsor

We are very pleased to announce Hypenotic as the sponsor of August’s Lowfoot Credits.

We began working with Hypenotic last year and they have helped us tremendously with our branding and marketing. We will continue to work with them as we grow Lowfoot and expand into different areas.

Hypenotic is a different kind of marketing company (they really are!). They are never afraid to tell you some ideas might not be great. They go on to provide solutions that always are better. They are very enthusiastic sponsors and even created a song and music video to mark their sponsorship of our members reductions in August.

Everyone who earns Lowfoot Credits in August should get to know Hypenotic better. Introduce yourself to them on their Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter. Better yet, if you or someone you know are looking to get some refreshing thoughts on getting your message out for your business, get in contact with them.

About Hypenotic (from their website)

Mar­ket­ing has changed a lot in the last few years. Most sig­nif­i­cantly in the way peo­ple are influ­enced by media. There’s sim­ply too much noise to expect prospects and pro­po­nents to hear care­fully crafted brand ‘mes­sag­ing’ any­more. No one’s lis­ten­ing. And if they are, they’re not acting.

Today, we notice, inter­act with, trust and rec­om­mend brands doing things that mat­ter to us. Rel­e­vance and use­ful­ness are marketing’s new key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors. It’s a great play­ground for Design­ers. Our real clients have always been our clients clients (get that?).

Finally, we should men­tion that we don’t like to pat our­selves on the back, so we got some­one else to do it. Hypenotic is a found­ing mem­ber of bCor­po­ra­tion Canada. It’s a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that gives us a gold star for being eth­i­cal cor­po­rate cit­i­zens, a yard­stick for improve­ment, and a net­work of sim­i­larly values-led orga­ni­za­tions. Yay, us.

How to register to see your smart meter data with PG&E

* Lowfoot Inc. has no formal relationship with PG&E. PG&E does not endorse Lowfoot Inc.. Lowfoot Inc. acts on behalf of its members, in accordance with our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Membership Agreement, independent of PG&E.

If you have a PG&E smart meter and would like to register to see your electricity usage data online (you must do this if you want to connect your usage data to your Lowfoot account), Here are the steps to do this if you are not already signed up to see your data online with PG&E:

1. First you need to sign up to see your account information online with PG&E. You will need a copy of your last bill from PG&E. When you are ready go to http://pge.com.

2. Enter the user information you would like to use for PG&E – Follow the instructions – Click on Submit when ready.

3. On the next screen enter your PG&E account number.

- Account Number is in the top left corner of your monthly bill
- Enter the full 12 characters of your account number including the dash.

4. Either enter your phone number you have associate with your PG&E account

OR

Your Meter Number
- You can use any gas or electric meter number associated with your account.
- The meter number appears in the Gas Account Detail section or Electric Account Detail section of your bill

Now add your meter to Lowfoot. Sign in to your Lowfoot Account by going here . If you don’t yet have a Lowfoot account, take a few minutes and sign up in one step here.

Once you are logged into your Lowfoot account

Click on “My Meters”

Choose “PG&E” from the drop down box

Enter the username you used for PG&E where it says, “Utility Username:”

Enter the password you used for the PG&E log in and we will store it securely.

Follow the remaining steps. If successful you have now connected your meter data to Lowfoot.

If you have any questions please feel free to email us at member.services@lowfoot.com and we’ll help you out.

The Lowfoot Experience: Part 2

Forward by S. Hammond – Below is part 2 of a guest blog from one of our founding members Robert Burns who lives in Markham, Ontario and is a customer of Powerstream. In Part 1, Robert discusses his initial thoughts about his own conservation habits and his thoughts on first using Lowfoot. In this continuation, Robert shares some great wisdom he has learned since last December.

By: Robert Burns

As a follow-up to my last guest blog of December 23, 2010, I have continued to learn from Lowfoot and continue to monitor and leverage the metrics provided by Lowfoot on almost a daily basis. In addition, member input and posts on the site have also been very valuable. I haven’t received my first Powerstream bill to compare yet; I will be on Lowfoot for a year in a month or so I expect the first PowerStream bill in September. I am very optimistic that my savings over the summer will be very significant compared to last year.

I have provided 7 additional items of experience since my last blog, I am sure there are still more to learn.

1.     Receive and Maintain Stakeholder Buy-in

• I do not believe we would have made the advances we have with energy conservation without the efforts and cooperation of the entire family
• We are not perfect, however we have made significant progress since my last blog in December
• Without family stakeholder buy-in this would be a very frustrating, if not an impossible task
• We now share power conservation ideas and everyone is very aware of what the costs are of energy
• My family is also very aware of the daily Lowfoot metrics that are provided and the progress we have made based upon the Lowfoot email Notifications and Facebook and Twitter updates that are posted from Lowfoot to my Facebook and Twitter communities

2.     Monitor the metrics provided by Lowfoot to fine tune kWh energy usage

• I look forward to receiving my daily Lowfoot kWh email notifications to monitor our progress
• From a conservation goal setting perspective, this valuable information from Lowfoot provides me with a quick validation if something has gone awry with our efforts
• In addition, it is always comforting to give Phil Playfair and Steve Hammond with some energy conservation KWh generation competition

3.     Air Cleaner and other high optics devices – Phantom Power

• I initially assessed our home for the usual “phantom or vampire power” suspects like, TV’s, computers, printers, battery chargers etc, however, there were others devices that I initially viewed as “sacred cows”… read on
• We have a powered HEPA air cleaner attached to our hi-efficiency furnace that I would never had turned off due to allergies etc… I initially put the air cleaner on a timer to run at night, seeing that we had fine tuned our AC usage; I unplugged it for the summer. It made enough of a difference to increase our kWh results the next day on Lowfoot!
• In hindsight, my allergies haven’t been that bad, not enough to turn it back on until winter, and then only on a timer with reduced usage.

 4.     Pool

• I believe putting our pool pump on a timer to run for 12 hours  (on from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am) also made a significant impact on our energy conservation, in addition to the air cleaner, this was another sacred cow that I thought we needed to have on 24/7.
• It has worked out OK for the most part, we have to manually skim during the day once in awhile, but it’s not a big deal. We haven’t had any algae issues and the water quality is excellent

5.     Laundry – Light or No Laundry weekends or  Full Loads every two weeks

• Initially we started doing our laundry only on weekends on Low Peak, but found another approach….
• Speaking of stakeholder buy-in, this was Judy, my wife’s idea. Rather that have a few ½ loads (whites, linens, towels, kids clothes, etc.) for the front load washer on the weekends, we try to have full loads and skip to the next weekend. Essentially having do laundry every other weekend for the most part. This approach cuts our laundry energy in half!
• We may have a critical load here and there on a weekend, but it seems to be working!

6.     Air Conditioning

• We just upgraded our old AC Freon unit to a more energy efficient SEER unit, however we use it very selectively
• Yet another sacred cow… We leave the windows open at night and enjoy the breeze rather than having the AC on and living in a fridge all summer as we have in the past. It has been reasonably comfortable and not enough to want the AC on.
• It’s July 21, 2011 and was in the high 40’s today with the Humidex, so of course this week we turned it on for the first time this summer, however we turned down all the shades and blinds in the house and turned on the ceiling fans through the house and set the AC to come on only over 25 or 27 degrees or so and a bit cooler at night when we are sleeping. As soon as this heat wave is over, time to shut the AC off
• In addition, when we do have the AC on we will put the furnace fan on “Auto” rather than  being “On” all the time, we had the fan “On” for the air cleaner noted in #3, this also saved us kWh. It’s on Auto now, which means more kWh savings

7.     Social Media

• We have opted to share our Lowfoot updates on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, this provides us with updates in addition to email and also shares the Lowfoot story with the non-Lowfoot community, it also affirms our energy conservation objectives by sharing the story and goals with others.

The Lowfoot Lowdown – June 2011 Edition

Lowfoot Members Struggle in June

While Lowfoot members over all reduced their usage by almost 2% from their baseline this represents this a far cry from the levels reached in May. Nonetheless the majority of members did do very well in either hitting their targets or keeping their usage below their baseline.

The most interesting aspect of the June numbers was the fact about 2% of the members completely fell off the reduction bandwagon and lapped up the bulk of the energy savings that were provided by the other members. This behavior is not unexpected and will be tackled with some of the new technology that will be released by Lowfoot in the coming months.

In the meantime, enjoy the summer. Get your air conditioner serviced and try and keep the house warmer than you typically do. Remember, for our northern members, the days are already getting shorter and winter is just around the corner…

Bluenotion: Purchasers of July’s (2011) Lowfoot Credits.

Bluenotion is an end-to-end web application development firm based in Toronto, Canada and are the purchasers of July 2011 Lowfoot Credits.

Bluenotion is the company behind Lowfoot’s web presence. Their innovative approach to user interface and elegant data design has allowed Lowfoot to ramp up its membership with minimum pain and maximum gain.

While Bluenotion works with a lot of large corporate clients Lowfoot has presented them with a unique set of challenges. “Our staff have really enjoyed working on Lowfoot and are proud to have been a part of it since the beginning,” said Mike Hyttinen, Founder and Principal. “It was also an honour to be approached to be the first corporate purchasers of Lowfoot Credits.”

Lowfoot credits are distributed to Lowfoot members who achieve their reduction targets for the month. Bluenotion’s name will appear on the credits as they are earned. Bluenotion will also receive a certificate indicating how much carbon and electricity they paid to reduce. In June Lowfoot members reduced approximately 2 metric tonnes of carbon and are on track to achieve that or more in July.

If you would like to take advantage of Bluenotion’s creativity and services please contact them at info@bluenotion.com or visit their site at www.bluenotion.com.

If you would like to purchase Lowfoot Credits for October 2011 or later months, please contact the Lowfoot Exchange at lfx@lowfoot.com.

Lowfoot Inc. Launches Private Carbon and Negawatt Exchange

For Immediate Release – June 23, 2011

Lowfoot Inc. Launches Private Carbon and Negawatt Exchange

Today Lowfoot announces an important milestone in its goal of establishing a mechanism for buying and selling carbon and energy reductions. As of today Lowfoot Credits (LFC) can be bought by corporations, organizations, or individuals. The credits are then distributed to Lowfoot members who achieve their monthly reduction targets. Simply put, corporations or individuals can now purchase the reductions that Lowfoot members are achieving.

“This is a great opportunity for corporations or individuals who want to have an immediate and measurable impact on reducing carbon and greenhouse gases”, said Lowfoot Co-Founder Phil Playfair. “The beauty of Lowfoot is that the results are there for each member to see. Using the historical data and the hourly data from the smart meter we know how much our members are reducing and we know the environmental impact of those reductions.”

Lowfoot Co-Founder Steve Hammond added, “Besides feeling good about helping the planet, corporations have maximum exposure with Lowfoot. Their logo and link appears in the daily Lowfoot feed, the daily email and text notifications and purchasers receive expanded reach as their link will appear in the social media engines that our members have connected to.”

2.5 Million People have Access to Lowfoot – 12.5 Million by end of July

Lowfoot has interfaces to five Utilities in Ontario, Canada who have a combined smart metered customer base of 2.5 million. Lowfoot is actively writing interfaces to another seven utilities whose combined smart metered base is over 10 million. Two of these utilities are based in the United States.

Lowfoot: The Next Steps

The ability to buy LFC’s is Lowfoot’s first step in creating a private exchange for carbon, negawatts and energy reductions. In the coming months Lowfoot will be providing its members with more flexibility when it comes to using, trading, saving or exchanging their Lowfoot Credits. In the near future Lowfoot members will be able to track and reduce other services including water, natural gas and transportation.

Lowfoot Credits are Now Available for Purchase

We have pre-sold the Lowfoot Credits for the months of July, August and September. If you would be interested in purchasing Lowfoot Credits for subsequent months please email LFX@lowfoot.com to make an appointment to speak to one of our Reduction Representatives.

For more information about the Lowfoot Exchange check out the Lowfoot Credit FAQ’s

For any questions about this press release please email press@lowfoot.com

Lowfoot Credit Exchange FAQ

Read more about the Lowfoot Credit Exchange in our press release about it.

What Makes up the Lowfoot Credit?

Currently the Lowfoot Credit is made up of four components with a fixed price:

Consumption = $0.02 a kilowatt hour
OnPeak Demand = $1.60 a kilowatt
MidPeak Demand = $1.28 a kilowatt
Carbon Reduction Credit = $12 a metric tonne

* Subject to change at any time and is subject to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Advertising Terms of Use and Membership Agreement.

The value of each is bundled to create the full value of the LFC. The number of Lowfoot credits distributed to Lowfoot members is dependent on how successful each member is in achieving their target. In the month of May over 275,000 Lowfoot credits were distributed to members.

How is the price of the Lowfoot Credit established?

Currently the base value of the Lowfoot Credit is made up of the fixed price of each of the components outlined above. In the future the value of the LFC will be subject to a monthly auction which will give corporations and individuals the chance to bid for all or a portion of a months’ LFC’s.

Can other Certificates or Credits Be Traded on the Lowfoot Exchange

Currently this is not possible but Lowfoot is open to partnership opportunities with other exchanges.

Who Can Purchase Lowfoot Credits?

Any individual, corporation or organization in the world can purchase Lowfoot Credits. The only criteria are that an entity or individual must join Lowfoot and agree to the advertising and privacy policy. Lowfoot reserves the right to reject any potential purchaser based on our membership, terms of use and privacy policies.

Who Should Buy Lowfoot Credits?

Any individual, corporation or organization that is interested in a simple and transparent method to reduce green house gases and encourage energy efficiency should buy Lowfoot Credits. Any individual, corporation or organization that wants to communicate, engage and start a conversation with an active and motivated community should buy Lowfoot Credits.

How Does Lowfoot Make Money?

For each Lowfoot Credit purchased, Lowfoot processes a fee for enabling the transaction.

What is the Potential for Lowfoot?

Lowfoot can operate wherever there are smart meters deployed. Currently we have interfaces with utilities that have a combined 2.5 million smart metered customers. By the end of July Lowfoot will be available to over 10 million smart metered customers as we expand in North America. Lowfoot is actively marketing and identifying smart meter markets in Europe, Asia and South America.

Who Can Join Lowfoot

Currently any one in the world can join Lowfoot. However to earn Lowfoot Credits a member must be a customer in a utility where Lowfoot has an active link to the smart meter data. Currently these utilities include: Toronto Hydro, Powerstream, Hydro One, Veridian, and Newmarket Hydro. We will be adding more utilities worldwide and will announcing them as we do.

Changes to your usage notifications

Today in your email notification and Lowfoot feed you have probably noticed a new message and look. As of today Lowfoot has formalize the process of selling your electricity reductions on your behalf. You will notice the statement “Reduction sold to Lowfoot.”

This means that Lowfoot has purchased your reductions for the month of June. Each month you will see the name and logo of the organization that has bought that month’s reductions.

For the official announcement about the Lowfoot Exchange go here.

For a list of FAQ’s go here.

Thanks again for being a Lowfoot Member. If you have any questions please email member.services@lowfoot.com.

Hydro One Customers can enjoy full membership on Lowfoot

Lowfoot is pleased to announce completion of our interface to Hydro One’s smart meter portal which will allow us to gather your smart meter data on your behalf.

If you are a customer of Hydro One, this means you can now become a full member of Lowfoot and, if you qualify, begin to receive rewards via Lowfoot Credits calculated each month.

To add your Hydro One meter to Lowfoot you need to make sure you have signed up with Hydro One to view your data online. If you have already done this skip the next sentence.

For instructions on how to do this, you can visit our blog post, “How to register to see your smart meter data with Hydro One” for the step by step instructions.

Once you have your Hydro One sign in information login into your Lowfoot account by going here: Lowfoot Login

1.    After logging in to Lowfoot, Click on “My Meters” at the top of the screen.
2.    Choose “Hydro One” where we ask for “Your Utility Provider”
3.    Enter your email address you used for Hydro One where we ask for “Utility Username:”
4.    And your Hydro One password in the “Utility Password:”
5.    You can name you meter if you want or leave it as “My Meter”
6.    Click on “Verify Connection”
7.    If all goes well, you will proceed to our membership agreement

If you have any questions or problems completing this, please reply to this email or email member.services@lowfoot.com and we would be pleased to help you.

Sincerely,
The Lowfoot Member Services Team
member.services@lowfoot.com

*** Lowfoot Inc. has no formal relationship with Hydro One. Hydro One does not endorse Lowfoot Inc.. Lowfoot Inc. acts on behalf of its members independent of Hydro One.