Seeing Electric Use (2007) by Ben Engebreth
A New Component of Personal Kyoto (2005-6)
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More than anything else, Personal Kyoto is an information project that aims to give users feedback on their individual level of electric use. The idea stems from the realization that few of us have any idea of what our electric use really is and that this lack of information is an impediment to reducing our use. For New York City residents, Personal Kyoto works by gathering individual electric use data from a user’s ConEd (the New York electric utility) account via its existing online billing system. Personal Kyoto simply takes this data and creates a more intuitive consumption metric—a running 12 month average of electric use which smoothes seasonal variation—and provides a reduction goal recommended by the Kyoto Protocol.
For the New Climates project I wanted to work on a way of looking at the aggregate electric use data in a geographical way. The map above shows the average monthly electric use for Personal Kyoto users at the zip code level. The green portions of the map indicate Personal Kyoto users that are consuming less electricity than users in the redder portions of the map. It is worth noting, however, that the biggest consumers of electricity on New York still consume less than the average American household which uses 800 kWh a month. The largest monthly average on this map comes in at 720 kWh.
The electric use map is updated regularly at the Personal Kyoto site.
– Ben Engebreth
