OPALCO Energy Efficiency Task Force, Tribes and Opower

Last week a group of OPALCO board members and local citizens concerned about energy met on Orcas to brainstorm steps OPALCO can take to help move action on energy efficiency to the next level. Yay! Kudos to OPALCO -- especially board members John Bogert, Winnie Adams, Bob Myher, and OPALCO energy services director Anne Bertino for moving forward on this very important issue.

Broadly -- OPALCO has been doing a good job implementing energy efficiency measures through its Energy Services office staffed by Anne Bertino and Elisa Scott-Howard. The Energy Services office (terrible name) gives out over $200,000 a year in rebates from everything from windows to refrigerators to heat pumps. But it is increasingly clear that our resources as an island community, and as a planet, are limited. OPALCO's load needs to stop growing, because any growth in electricity consumption is going to be at high "tier 2" rates from BPA.

One of the conversations that emerged from that meeting was about messaging. How can we inspire folks to pay a bit more attention to electricity consumption? Turn down the heat when/where it's not necessary. Dry clothes on clotheslines instead of in a clothes dryer. And a thousand other little steps that, together, can add up to huge savings? (User behavior, we've found at Common Ground, is huge. Identical houses. But a factor of nearly three in electricity consumption across households of identical sizes).

I think Seth Godin's lecture on Tribes has some relevance here... 


Instead of regular advertising (dumbed-down idea + lots of adds), can we harness "tribes" of affinity?

One idea I'm intrigued by is direct comparison with neighbors and friends. One outfit that's doing interesting work on these lines is Opower, in collaboration with Facebook. If OPALCO signs up, data can be uploaded from OPOWER automatically. But you can also manually put it in. Below is a graphic from Opower comparing our home with other similar homes in the region. I put in the data manually...



And it can go up on Facebook, where you can find how you compare among friends & neighbors.

Useful? Well, only among those in Opalco territory who -- at this point -- care about energy efficiency and also "do" Facebook. But who knows, maybe this tribe has surprising ways of growing.