The World of Wattvision

An energy metering system
 
Click. That’s the sound of Savraj Singh Dhanjal, founder of Wattvision, turning off a light switch in Pennington, NJ. A few seconds later, the iPhone screen we’re watching registers the change. It shows that the house we’re in is now using 70 less watts of energy, and we’ve just saved two cents per hour.
 
And really, that is all it takes. Research shows that when people can see exactly how much electricity they are using, they almost always use less.
 
“The only way to improve something is to measure it,” explains Dhanjal.
 
Energy metering systems like this are still relatively novel, but Dhanjal envisions a future in which every single building in the world will have one. And he hopes Wattvision will lead the way.
 
Dhanjal, age 30, graduated from Princeton University in 2003 with a degree in computer science. He worked for Microsoft for a few years, but then decided to work for himself. His idea to build energy monitors came in 2008 after he asked his father a few questions about their family’s home energy use. Dhanjal’s father, an aerospace engineer for Lockheed Martin, didn’t know the answers. Dhanjal recalls his dad saying “Well, the energy bill varies between $300 and $600.” This inspired Dhanjal to search the Internet for home energy monitors. He discovered that nothing on the market provided exactly what he wanted: real-time energy data on a smart phone or computer, in a package that could be set up easily.
 
“There were a couple products out there that kind of did what I wanted, but they were really hard to install,” Dhanjal says. “You had to have an electrician. If you tried to install it yourself, you were risking death.”
 
Not satisfied with that option, Dhanjal decided to build his own energy metering system from scratch. The project would require both hardware design and software design. Fortunately, these skills were already in the family. Dhanjal programmed the software interface, while his father helped build Wattvision’s patented energy sensor. The Wattvision prototype was completed in the family’s Central Jersey basement.
 
The first time Dhanjal turned on the system, he was afraid something must be wrong. His parent’s home was registering an energy use of 1,500 watts — a high number — but it was a quiet day in the house. Eventually, he figured out the system was working fine. The problem was, just from being plugged in, “vampire electronics” were sucking up energy. “We went around the house unplugging things,” Dhanjal says. “We were able to cut our energy use in half.”
 
Now, nearly three years later, the Wattvision sensor is ready for primetime. It’s available for purchase from wattvision.com. Although, not the only home energy meter on the market,
Dhanjal believes it is the easiest to install and offers the best results.
 
Wattvision is still headquartered in Dhanjal’s parent’s basement, and he’s still the only full-time employee. But he already has a few angel investors lined up in California, and has been talking to venture capitalists. In hopes of taking the company to the next level, he is considering moving Wattvision to Silicon Valley.
 
The product. At Microsoft, Dhanjal’s job was to make sure that users of Word 2007 had the best experience possible. Now, he is concentrating on the same goal for Wattvision.
 
When Dhanjal shows me how to install the Wattvision sensor over a home’s standard electricity meter, it does, in fact, look incredibly easy to do. Dhanjal, of course, has had plenty of chances to practice. For a second opinion, I consult Ted Borer, energy plant manager at Princeton University. Borer uses Wattvision in his own home.
 
Was it easy to install?
 
“I could have had my ten year old set it up,” Borer reports.
 
What Borer likes best about Wattvision is the real-time energy data, which is updated through his home’s wireless Internet network every 15 seconds. He has tested the system and found it to be highly accurate. “For $250, this instrumentation is much, much better than I would expect,” he says.
 
Dhanjal knows that good software will be just as crucial to his product’s success as good hardware. That is why Wattvision aims to be more than just an energy monitoring system. It wants to make saving electricity an interesting activity — by pitting neighbor against neighbor on the Internet.
 
In the world of Wattvision, homes that use less energy than average have green roofs and homes that use more energy than average have red roofs. By logging onto wattvision.com, users can snoop around and see how much electricity their Wattvision-equipped friends are using. It’s kind of like Facebook for your energy meter.
 
“A lot of research has shown that the best actions come from your own competitiveness, your own innate desire to see where you stand among your peers,” Dhanjal says. “The social aspect is a big part of what we’re building.”
 
Dhanjal says about two-thirds of current Wattvision users choose to share their energy data. Keeping this data totally private is also an option.
 
Dhanjal plans to continue to build functionality into the system. Currently, Wattvision can send you a warning via text message if your energy use spikes. In the future, Wattvision will be smart enough to make helpful energy saving suggestions. And this is just the beginning. “I can’t imagine a future where we don’t have this technology,” he says. “I can’t imagine a future where we don’t know, ‘Hey, this is our impact on the environment at this moment right now.’” •
 
What do you do in your spare time?
Brainstorm cool new apps, products, and optimizations of existing things.

Righty or Lefty?  
Lefty.

Beverage of Choice?  
Lately, it’s a Tall Chai Tea Latte.

Favorite Food?  
My Mom’s Punjabi cooking.

Favorite Dinner Music?  
Royksopp - a Norwegian electronic music duo.

Favorite Local Restaurant?
Tortuga’s - a Mexican restaurant in Princeton, NJ.

If You Could Have Dinner with Anyone, Who Would It Be?
Sergey Brin. (present)
Nikola Tesla. (past)
 
 
www.wattvision.com