Written by Elly

When you get your electricity bill, how closely do you look at it? Honestly, do you really look at all those charges? Do you know what any of them really mean?

Read More

Written by Elly

Every neighbourhood has one – a house bedecked and bejewelled from stem to stern in Christmas lights. There are a few in mine and every time I go by one of them, I can’t help but think, “How much is all this additional electricity costing them?!?”

Read More

Happy Friday SwitchHoppers. We’re pretty excited to announce a new feature we released – household level information. If you provide this information (which is totally optional), your peer comparisons will be more precise (since you’ll be compared to homes with similar characteristics).

Read More

Rick thought his power consumption was pretty average…until he added some friends on SwitchHop and realized that he’s a power hog. It’s not his fault – how was he supposed to know that a baseload of 1 kWh was unusually high?

It wasn’t until he compared himself with friends that he realized his home was consuming about double the power of everyone else.

Lots of people who want to understand their home energy consumption start by using a power meter or other device for measurement. They wind up with lots of information but no context. This is what Rick had done. He knew exactly what his house was consuming but was missing a key element – context.

Were these numbers good or bad? Above or below the norm? How much did his neighbour across the street – who’s got the same model house as him – use? What about his friends?

Read More

We’ve just made it much easier for you to get your analytical geek on! You can now use SwitchHop to look back historically at your energy usage. It’s a useful feature that gives you insight into where to focus your energy conservation efforts. It also helps you measure past efforts to determine whether or not they were worth your while.

Read More

Woohoo! New Features! We just rolled-out some awesome new features that are really going to improve your SwitchHop experience.

Read More

As you start to use SwitchHop, you might be thinking, “Why did these guys build this amazing service?” (at least, we hope you’re thinking that ☺ ).

The way we consume power and pay for it has been virtually the same for a long, long time. We blindly consume energy then get a bill for it a month after the fact. That’s kind of archaic considering the technology that’s out there today.

So, we think it’s time for a new experience – one where you can see what you’re consuming and what it’s costing you in real-time. It’s an experience where you can take action mid-month to ensure your bill doesn’t give you a heart-attack when you open it.

And we think home energy management should be social! We’re building tools to let your peers help you identify and achieve opportunities to save energy and lower your bill.

With that in mind, here are some of the guiding principles behind SwitchHop.

Read More

Check out this infographic to see what some of your appliances are costing you in power consumption each year. Might push you over the edge to go buy that energy efficient fridge you’ve been eyeing…

Infographic: What’s Driving Your Energy Bill

And the moral of the story is: make sure your heating and cooling system is dialed-in and not wasting any energy!