The White House hopes that someday soon everyone will be able to monitor and control their home energy usage, and lower their monthly utility bills, with a few swipes on a smartphone app... 
[Aneesh speaking] It might be helpful for you to make judgments about what kind of retrofit decisions to make. You might be interested in knowing whether or not it's worthwhile for you to put solar panels on your roof...so there are secondary and tertiary applications that we have yet to even imagine.
...it may finally give consumers a reason to care about the smart grid.
Three big California power utilities are launching a Web-based tool to help their customers save energy - and money.
We've learned when our customers have data about energy habits, they can save money," said [SDG&E communications manager Erin] Coller
Solar companies are also eager for consumer data because understanding a homeowner's electricity use is key to the sales process. Many consumers don't know how much they spend each month on electricity, or stash old bills in file cabinets.
Speaking alongside executives from several prominent energy companies in Silicon Valley today, Aneesh Chopra will announce new online tools to help consumers track their energy use and, ultimately, save money.
The project is important because it is a broad-based plan to take energy data and standardize the format of it, open it up (while also providing security) and make it readily available to consumers.
Well, that was fast. Just months after U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra challenged the nation's utilities to build a "Green Button" system to share their customers energy data, California's biggest utilities have risen to the challenge.
The project, championed by U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra, standardizes the deliver[y] of household energy data and is seen as a catalyst to create an ecosystem for app developers to produce new services and products.
I'm a big fan of simplicity and open standards to unleash a lot of innovation. I'm going to reach out to ConEd, the utility in NYC, and find out when they are going to add Green Button support to their consumers data. I hope it is soon.
Yesterday's event revealed what can be accomplished when software innovators, government leaders and utilities focus on a common goal.
Having bemoaned the smart grid's comedy of errors in the past, I think this could mark a turning point where utilities have been successfully pressured into customer-friendliness.
...this is a dream come true after 30 years in this business - for consumers, for society and for the environment.
Among those in attendance was software developer Joss Scholten of Austin, Texas, who created an app in 12 hours using PG&E's green button. The app, which he displayed on his iPad, shows hourly, monthly and daily electric usage in a customer-friendly display.
We welcome the opportunity to partner with the White House in bringing innovative technology of the smart grid to our customers. This is directly in line with the PHI vision defined in our Blue Print for the Future. Advanced technologies and energy efficiency programs designed to improve service to our customers and empower them to manage their energy use and costs.
SDG&E customers are now among the first in the nation to be able to download their energy usage data in a simple-to-read format and share it with third-parties for energy evaluation and analysis.
The advent of the Green Button data means that now, our platform can be leveraged by each of these groups and ultimately, help foster the creation of an energy app marketplace that will drive continued innovation, job growth and cleaner energy.
We are excited to be able to work with the Green Button initiative to provide millions of customers across California with a social, fun and simple way of understanding their own energy data. By allowing people access to their energy usage data in a meaningful way on platforms where they are already spending their time such as Facebook, we make saving energy into an easy and enjoyable experience.
...what is certain is that there would be a plan which will certainly suit your life-style better and could save you a few dollars along with the obvious "green" benefits.
The California utilities implemented it in a matter of weeks, and the benefits will be realized over time with every app that gets developed.
We are implementing our Smart Grid system and are ready to deliver the benefits that go with it, including giving customers access to their energy and water information.
Aclara announces that in April it will turn on support for the Green Button initiative at 21 major utilities in 22 states. Green Button is a voluntary effort by utilities across the country, celebrated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House, to provide energy use data to customers in a standard format. When Aclara turns on Green Button in April, usage data in a standard format will be available to eight million utility customers.
By April, Aclara says it will offer green button capability to the other 20 or so utility customers now using its customer presentment software, including Avista, Wisconsin Public Service, DTE Energy, Dominion Power and Duke Energy.
The Cleanweb Hackathon attracted about 100 developers in New York City as well as a panel of judges that included New York City's chief digital officer and the U.S. chief technology officer "I believe we are on the cusp of this new golden age and part of this new golden age will be built on this idea of the clean Web," [said Sunil Paul, a venture capitalist]... A number of applications sought to create competition among individuals to motivate people to lower their personal energy use through gaming or sharing their information... A potential data standard is the Green Button, which provides an individual's electricity use in one-hour increments for a year. Three utilities last week showed off some applications that use the data, such as letting consumers decide on different time-of-use utility rates or evaluating solar.