Wattzon

WattzOn is a free web-based online tool created by Saul Griffith and Raffi Krikorian. It allows users to calculate their total energy footprint by estimating their direct and indirect power consumption with the stated goal of educating users about energy efficiency and conservation. It's notable, because unlike most carbon calculators it measures energy consumption, and not the by-products (CO₂, or CO₂ equivalent emissions) and because it aggregates information into a holistic view of energy consumption allowing users to see the energy used in their driving compared to their eating, for example.

The original notions behind WattzOn were first spoken about by Saul Griffith and Jim McBride in a presentation entitled “The Game Plan: A solution framework for the climate challenge.” ^[1] delivered at O'Reilly's Foo Camp and later detailed at length in Griffith's Long Now talk entitled Climate Change Recalculated.^[2] From there, Raffi Krikorian spearheaded the effort to create an online tool that anybody could use to measure his or her level of energy efficiency. That website, which became WattzOn.com, was first demonstrated at PopTech on October 23, 2008 and again presented at the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Summit on November 6, 2008. Notably, WattzOn.com is implemented using the Scala programming language.^[3] Along with Twitter, it is one of the earliest publicly visible systems implemented in Scala.

WattzOn has garnered media coverage from a number of blogs and media outlets such as Business Week,^[4] Wired magazine,^[5] and Lifehacker.com.^[6]

In 2011 the site departed markedly from its original intent of helping users calculate a comprehensive power footprint of their lives. It now focuses on home and business energy and utility bill auditing.

References

External links

• WattzOn