Industry

Cleanweb Hackathon 2012

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In 2012 we were thrilled to be a sponsor of the Cleanweb hackathon in New York.  The event was the weekend of 1/21 - 1/22 and, among others, was organized by Spring Ventures and Dynamo following on from the great job they did with organizing the first Cleanweb in San Francisco in the fall of 2011.

Our original annoucement, Fall 2011

If the first Cleanweb in San Francisco this fall was any sign, we can expect to see some great  ideas.  We’ve expanded the feature set on the Genability APIs which now include:

  • a Switch APIs for saving load profiles and other account information so you can generate very accurate calculations without much set up from your side.

  • more flexible calculations so that if you do not have the answers to all the questions, or if we do not have the pricing data for a time frame you are interested in, we will make a best guess, and let you know the accuracy of the calculation.

And if you’re just getting familiar with the Genability APIs and plan to participate in the hackathon, be sure to:

  • sign up at hackerleague.org and register for the Cleanweb hackathon event

  • read this quick start to getting started with the Genability APIs.

We’ll also have a couple of Genabilists entering the hacking competition including Matthew and Michael who won the overall prize at the SF Cleanweb Hack with their TACO entry.  Here’s a list of all the finalists and winners from that first event.

Happy holidays everyone.  See you in 2012!

Blog on the eve of the event (Jan 20th)

As one of the sponsors of the Cleanweb Hackathon in NewYork this coming weekend, (1/21 - 1/22), we would like to spotlight some of the local utilities and associated tariff data that Genability makes available for usage and analysis.

Genability provides extensive residential data coverage for all of NY, NJ and CT.  The New York and Connecticut area has some of the highest residential electric rates in the country, almost twice the national average. Some of the dominant utilities in the areas are:

  • Consolidated Edison serving New York City and Westchester County

  • Orange and Rockland serving southeastern New York and adjacent areas of northern New Jersey

  • Long Island Power Authority  servingNassau and Suffolk and Queens Counties on Long Island, NY

  • PSEG serves Northern New Jersey, including New Jersey ‘s six largest cities.

  • Jersey Central  serving Central NJ

  • Connecticut Light & Power  serving Connecticut

  • Central Hudson serving New York State’s Mid-Hudson River Valley.

  • Niagara Mohawk d/b/a National Grid  serving upstate New York

We also encourage you to tap into  the commercial and industrial tariffs we track for  Consolidated Edison, Long Island Power Authority, PSEG,  Jersey Central (Central NJ) and Connecticut Light & Power (CT).

As is usually the case, the devil is in the details and our tools (APIs and Genability Explorer)  can be used to unbundle and gain insight into complex rate schedules and electricity price trends.

  • For Consolidated Edison, which has the distinction of being one of the most expensive utilities in the nation, Genability offers daily market supply charge updates. The Market Supply Charge is the major component of your total electricity supply cost per kWh and recovers all costs incurred by the utility to purchase electricity in the open market for customers who do not have an alternate energy supplier.  Market supply charges vary significantly on a day-today basis ands also between the territories where Consolidated  Edison operates.

  • Central Hudson offers multiple On-Peak periods to choose from for their residential customers, 8am-8pm, 9am-9 pm & 10am - 10 pm.  With our tools, we can certainly help figure out the appropriate plan to choose.

  • National Grid offers service in seven territories with noticeable and meaningful differences in the generation rates.

With accurate data and appropriate analysis tools,  making informed decisions about available rate plans and electricity usage becomes much easier.

Reporting After the Hackathon

It was a great weekend at the NYC Cleanweb Hackathon.  Genability is proud to have been a sponsor to the standing room only event that gathered over 100 developers, an impressive panel of judges and special guest Aneesh Chopra, United States Chief Technology Officer.  Fifteen teams, including Genability’s team WattQuiz, presented their hacks and received awards.

After the successful hack weekend, Ecomagination caught up with Micah Kotch, Director of Operations at the New York City cleantech incubator, NYC ACRE (New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy) for a live interview.  Along with answering questions about his experience helping organize the first Cleanweb Hack in NYC and what makes a successful startup, Kotch answered questions from fans and followers via Facebook and Twitter.

During the interview @cleantechnyc gave a few honorable mentions some of the Cleanweb teams–@wattquiz @honestbuildings @windanalytics @econofy @themodlet.  Read more on Twitter under the hashtag #grlive.

The Green Room chat streamed live January 25th, at 12:30 pm EST but will be available for later viewing in the same player.

Roundup of the Projects

Genability recently participated in the 2nd Cleanweb Hackathon. The event was held in NYC so a few members of our team headed east to participate.  The first ever Cleanweb hack was held this past summer in San Francisco, in which Genability’s own TEAM TACO took first prize.  Genability was thrilled to be a sponsor again and while we didn’t win the event we had several hackers use our API and met some fascinating people – including the CTO of the US – Aneesh Chopra.  Cleanweb hackers from all over the U.S. gathered in NYC to create apps with APIs such as Tendril and NYC Open Data.

Some of our favorite hacks, including our own, were:

WattQuiz was built by Genability developers and aimed to be the energy equivalent of freerice.com.  Consumers could upload their personal energy data via Green Button Initiative and then answer questions about their usage.  Points (aka watts) would then be donated to various charities via donorschoose.org.

Team Wattquiz

SolarList provides real-time cost calculations for solar installations and was built by Tyler Tringas and worked with Genability’s API.

AuditTrigger provides real-time assessment of a building’s need for an energy audit.  AuditTrigger was built on EnergyScoreCards.

Econofy was the crowd favorite and winner of the event.  Econofy is an online rating system for appliance manufacturers to compete with each other for energy efficiency appliances.  The application is currently in beta and utilizes an API from Tendril.

NYC BLDGS tracks energy consumption of NYC buildings to create a friendly competition against each other.

For a full list of all the hacks, check out this list from 3Scale.   Also, full coverage of the presentations can be viewed here.

Following the event, Genability got some one-on-one time with Aneesh Chopra to discuss the Green Button Initiative.  Genability is Green Button ready and you can start uploading your data.

Thanks again to everyone for participating and we look forward to the next Cleanweb Hackathon.  Have ideas for the next Cleanweb Hack location?  Send us your suggestions!

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