Electricity Maps Blog
September 16, 2024
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8 minutes
Today, over 60% of consumers rank sustainability as the top 3 value driver when making product purchases. Sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have — it's a baseline requirement. As emissions of electricity grids fluctuate more there’s also a growing opportunity to cut emissions by shifting energy use to times when more renewable energy is available. These sustainable solutions will inevitably attract and engage new users.
In this blog post, learn how our new renewable energy forecasts enable consumer electronics companies to build more engaging products that optimize energy use and empower their consumers to lower their carbon footprint daily.
Households represented more than 25% of final energy consumption in Europe in 2022 making it the second largest energy-consuming sector just behind transport. Households’ electrification will dramatically increase in the coming years offering a huge opportunity for companies to engage users while contributing to grid decarbonization with the flexibility of electric consumer devices.
End-users have an active role to play in grid decarbonization, and the good news is that customers are ready and eager to play their role! Today, 54% of customers are willing to pay more for sustainability features. Sustainability has become a priority for customers to choose their smart home products. The SmartThings Energy feature developed by Samsung enabled them to increase user engagement and win a sustainability award at CES.
So, how can companies leverage this new opportunity? It all starts with informing the end-user about the variability of electricity sources. The electricity mix, and hence carbon emissions, from electricity generation varies with time and location. Consumers care about the electricity sources they consume from. Features built on historical and real-time data can inform them about where their current electricity comes from as well as their carbon footprint over the last weeks or months.
Forecast signals unlock further the potential for user engagement and emissions reduction in flexible electricity usage. Informing the users on what electricity sources will be in the coming hours and days empowers them to make more sustainable choices. This can be complemented by alerts about when to consume electricity to benefit from cleaner electricity.
The emissions reduction potential is maximized through seamless automatic scheduling of electricity consumption. Empowering the user to shift the usage of air-conditioning, heating, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, and more appliances can save a significant amount of household emissions without noticeably impacting daily life. Samsung SmartThings makes this possible for millions of users worldwide with the Optimal Charging and AI Energy Mode developed on top of Electricity Maps data.
Developing new features to leverage consumer electronics devices' flexibility to boost user engagement and reduce emissions requires a grid signal. As many possible signals exist and each has its advantages, let’s reintroduce which one makes the most sense for different objectives.
The flow traced hourly carbon intensity is the most accurate representation of grid emissions at a specific time considering electricity exchanges between regions and countries. It is our recommended signal to develop features seeking to optimize electricity usage to reduce grid emissions and support grid decarbonization.
Generation from variable renewable energy sources and the percentage of renewables on the grid are also great signals to use. These signals help in the transition to a decarbonized electricity grid but they are most importantly intuitive and easy-to-understand for end-users. They are aligned with real-world observations such as the sun shining or the wind blowing. As such they increase user engagement by educating them about the dynamics of grid emissions.
Already today, Monta’s smart charging feature combines forecasts of flow traced hourly carbon intensity and percentage of renewables to leverage the best of each signal. Since the feature launch in May 2023, more than 70k charges have been made carbon-aware. An average of 200g of CO2 has been saved for each charge optimized on renewables or carbon intensity. The feature also increased Monta’s app user engagement with a +48% growth in customers performing carbon-aware charging in Q1 2024 compared to 2023.
Grid emissions fluctuations have become more widespread in recent years with the explosion of renewable energy generation. Why this makes renewable energy forecasts an important tool can be explained when looking at the example of Germany in Europe.
Solar and wind power together represented more than 40% of Germany’s grid mix in 2023 compared to 25% in 2018. As a consequence, carbon intensity can more than double within 24 hours.
The addition of intermittent renewable sources on the grid brings massive opportunities for optimization to consume cleaner electricity depending on the times of generation from wind and solar power. The renewable energy percentage in Germany can fluctuate between 30% and 80% in less than a day. We thus made it our new challenge to forecast grid-level renewable generation with the highest accuracy possible.
Our new offering of grid-level renewable energy forecasts based on improved weather data is now being rolled out worldwide. It empowers our customers to develop better carbon-aware features that not only help reduce grid emissions or serve long-term grid decarbonization goals but also engage their users with actionable and easy-to-understand insights that differentiate their consumer electronics solutions.
Accuracy is not just a technical achievement, it is also crucial to maintain consumer trust. A new feature will be regularly used and increase engagement only if trusted. It first and foremost relies on an intuitive methodology that can be easily explained to the end-users but also on accurate predictions. With more and more scrutiny on sustainability features, trust and transparency are also central to ensuring emissions reduction and avoiding accusations of greenwashing.
Our open and scientific forecasting methodology is trusted by millions and verified by leading energy experts, providing confidence in the integrity and accuracy of our data. Our new forecast offering combines more extensive weather data with our experience in machine learning applied to electricity grids to ensure the most accurate predictions.
Our forecast offering comes with SLAs on completeness and quality to empower our customers to confidently build robust features. In the first two weeks of September, our forecasts achieved a 15% MAE on wind and solar generation in Germany.
The new renewable energy forecasts feature is getting rolled out worldwide through our API. Our data covers more than 150 zones globally. Our API is easy to integrate and enables you to quickly develop a proof of concept for the development of novating features. By standardizing and harmonizing electricity data through a single API, we allow you to quickly scale your POCs in a worldwide feature wherever your customers are.
Reach out to try our new grid-level renewable energy forecasts!
Explore our free app to understand electricity grids and their CO2 emissions around the world.
