Welectricity wins “Best New Sustainability Innovation” at Wharton Innovation Tournament

Welectricity, an innovative, award-winning social network that helps users track, compare and reduce their electricity consumption at home, has won an award at the prestigious Knowledge@Wharton/Wipro Technologies Innovation Tournament, held at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania last month.

Welectricity lets users compete with themselves and each other to reduce energy consumption

Sponsored jointly by Knowledge@Wharton and Wipro Technologies, a global IT services company, the tournament challenged innovators from around the world to compete for a total of $40,000 in cash prizes. The tournament inspired more than 160 submissions from six continents. The 44 teams that made it to the semifinals were asked to submit video presentations. From those, the top 14 entrants were invited to Philadelphia on April 27 to present their ideas to a panel of judges made up of academics and industry leaders.

“I can’t imagine a more diverse set of opportunities,” Karl Ulrich, Wharton’s vice dean of innovation and one of the judges, told the finalists at the end of the day’s presentations. “We had [entries about] world peace and customer data and carbon credits…. It was incredibly diverse.”

Awards were presented in four categories and a grand prize was awarded. Following the presentations by 15 finalists at the final event on April 27th, Welectricity was judged the “Best New Sustainability Innovation”.

Welectricity, a free web application (at www.welectricity.com) that allows users to track, compare and reduce their electricity consumption at home was launched on April 22, 2010, (the 40th anniversary of Earth Day) and to date has registered users from 86 countries worldwide.

Welectricity is based on principles of behavioural economics – it incorporates behavioural nudges to motivate people to reduce their consumption.

The first of these nudges is the provision of information. People need information to allow them to understand and, if necessary, adjust their consumption. But it is now well-established (though not widely recognized) that information, on its own, does not motivate people to change their consumption behaviour. Consumers also need regular feedback, they need to be able to set consumption-reduction goals (and to make plans to achieve those goals) and, most importantly, they need to be able to able to compare their consumption with that of similar others – a condition psychologists refer to as “social proof”.

Welectricity’s creator, St Vincent resident Herbert A (Haz) Samuel, notes that “psychologists and behavioral economists have found that social proof is one of the most fundamental and powerful factors that influence people to take action, and this is one of Welectricity’s key features.”

Welectricity packages these specific behavioural factors into a social network that incorporates the normal functions of social media – users sign up, set up profiles, invite and interact with friends on a simple, twitter-style messaging interface. On the Welectricity dashboard, a bar graph of the user’s electricity consumption (based on information entered from actual bills) is displayed and the consumption graphs of similar users can be superimposed and directly compared.

A key feature of Welectricity is that it is a low-carbon solution that only requires access to an internet-connected computer and some information from existing utility bills. No smart meters or other in-house monitoring devices need to be manufactured, packaged, shipped, purchased and installed for Welectricity to work. This Samuel sees as an important point.

“After all,” Welectricity’s blog notes, “what’s the point of using a whole lot of energy and carbon emissions to bring you a bunch of new stuff that’s meant to help you use less energy and emit less carbon?”

Welectricity is a winner of a 2009 IDEAS Energy Innovation Contest award, which was sponsored by GVEP International, GTZ, the IDB and the Korean Government. GVEP International (Global Village Energy Partnership) is an international non profit organisation seeking to reduce poverty through accelerated access to modern energy services. The funding for the Energy Innovation Contest was provided to GVEP International by the Dutch government (DGIS).