Recently a new application developed by the Danish company Kamstrup was announced. This application allows electricity consumers to view up to date data about their consumption. The application is available for iOS and Android devices in the App Store and Google Play store.

The application does not take a novel approach to data visualization. It provides a bar graph with accompanying text data. This is unlike the application we designed which takes a novel approach to data visualization through the metaphor of an emptying fish tank. However, I still feel that the application is relevant to the theme of this blog. This is because the application seeks to give consumers awareness about the limited resources that they consume.

The application has alarms that can be configured to alert the user when energy usage has surpassed set limits. The real time aspect of the application allows users to be more proactive about their data usage. Instead of the usual monthly granularity, users can look at day-to-day trends and even year-to-year trends. This allows them to make much more informed decisions, and hopefully decisions which lead to better efficiency. Consumers can also take action within a day or two of unusually high energy use taking place rather than waiting to respond after receiving a large monthly billing statement.

As more applications such as this one are developed and released to the public, awareness of consumption may become much more mainstream. We believe mobile bandwidth monitoring applications will become much more popular once unlimited data plans are completely phased out. The driving factor behind the adoption of these monitoring applications will generally be money. Consumers are always looking for ways to minimize cost. By investing a few dollars in a mobile phone application they could save potentially thousands more.

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New App Makes it Easy to Save Energy