Envismo: A Mobile Platform for Collecting and Visualizing Energy Usage Data

We have constructed Envismo (energy-visualization-mobility), a prototype of a real-time energy-monitoring platform that pairs common mobile Internet devices (Nokia N810 internet tablets) with cheap, readily available environmental sensors and a webbased datastore tied to an existing energy-monitoring network. This allows for the collection of real-time fine-grained environmental and energy usage data that can supplement and contextualize existing measures like electricity consumption and water use. Users can interact with visualizations of this data on the mobile device in order to evaluate energy consumption patterns, diagnose electrical problems and inefficiencies, and explore their own energy use. A current prototype uses utilities data from the UC Berkeley Green Building Research Center (http://greenbuildings.berkeley.edu), and allows us to display current and historical data from energy, steam, and water meters across the Berkeley campus and supplement it with temperature and luminosity information.