Need motivation to save energy? – Go for social media competition!

There is a large potential by closely monitoring the energy consumption of your appliances in a comprehensive overview. Being aware of the largest energy consumers and the general energy demand over the day, one can optimize his/her household to reduce power consumption or to shift consumption to a daytime where the demand/supply situation is better.
However, what is the motivation to do so?
As it can be seen in other situations (like riding a bike vs. taking the car, etc.), saving a few bucks might not be enough motivation to effectively change the consumers’ behavior.
Austin Montgomery, University of Waterloo gives a possible solution to this problem in his video “Making the Smart Grid Smarter with Social Media”: make it a competition on social networks!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoFo-fcpFvU?version=3]

By the way, this is my favorite video from the IEEE SmartGridComm 2011 video contest. Check http://www.ieee-smartgridcomm.org/video.html for the other nominated clips.