Wattzon: Measuring how much energy you use in your life
Saul Griffith is a little obsessed with his own carbon footprint, or how much energy he personally uses in his life. He’s created WattzOn, a web site that can calculate exactly how much energy he uses in a year in terms of wattage consumed.
The answer is 18,106 watts, which is high compared to the average of 8,356 watts. The idea is to personalize the challenge of energy conservation so that people can take action to reduce their own consumption.
On stage today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Griffith, whose startups include Makoni Power and Squid Labs, presented the data in a color-code pie with slices representing each segment of his life in terms of energy consumption. He calculated on the spot that a surf board would cost him about 2.81 watts a year, based on the likelihood that it will be built with certain materials and imported from Australia.
His home, for instance, accounts for 791 watts consumed per year. Food is 466 watts. But since he flies about 105,000 miles in a given year, Griffith calculated that he consumes 8,214 watts of power to do that. Commuting consumes another 2,205 watts. Griffith cited government statistics that estimate current worldwide demand for energy is 16 terawatts per year.
The site, which is in pre-alpha mode, can also calculate the equivalent of oil consumed in terms of pints. He burns 32,356 pints of oil per year to support his lifestyle. Users can choose which items they own or the activities they pursue, such as how many miles they commute. The site then compares that data to energy conversion databases that are readily available.
“That brings it home,” he said.
I expect that a lot of these kinds of applications will catch on with the green generation. At lunch, I sat next to tech visionary/journalist Kevin Kelly. He noted that there is a movement in this direction, as is evident in his site The Quantified Self, where people are posting all the data they have about their lives.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.