Greenbox Technology, creators of energy management software for the home, has partnered with Silver Spring Networks to successfully deploy the Greenbox interactive energy management platform for Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E). The goal of OG&E's Positive Energy SmartPower program is to empower customers to better manage their energy consumption and control costs using Greenbox's intuitive Web-based interface. Silver Spring Networks provided the network infrastructure, data collection and integration with the Greenbox platform via its Smart Energy Network.

Consumers are increasingly aware of their home energy consumption and it is the first and most natural place for them to impact their usage by changing habits. Leading utilities around the country are currently in the process of upgrading their infrastructure and are exploring ways to help customers manage their home energy use. The trial deployment at OG&E will inform the market about the best ways to meet new consumer expectations for saving energy and inform utilities on how to implement programs with time-of-use rate structures and solutions such as those from Greenbox.

"Greenbox sets a new standard for energy intelligence in the home," said Jonathan Gay, founder of Greenbox Technology and creator of Flash. "Just as Flash enables hundreds of millions users to experience multimedia on the Internet, Greenbox enables households to experience and understand their energy usage in ways never before possible."

Greenbox Technology brings a Web-based approach to meeting the needs of both utilities and their residential energy customers. Greenbox provides utilities with a Web-based interactive energy management platform that delivers an insightful, consumer-friendly interface for smart grid initiatives. For residential energy customers, Greenbox provides the information and tools that enable customers to better manage their energy usage, control costs and reduce their carbon footprint by helping them understand how and when they are using energy through custom usage analysis, historical visualizations of energy use and email reports and alerts.

Greenbox educates customers on time-of-use pricing models and suggests ways to save money by reducing energy usage during peak periods. Greenbox even allows households to compare their usage to that of similar homes, and to understand their electricity-based carbon footprint. The product can also support monitoring of water and gas usage and be customized to meet the unique needs of each utility.

Silver Spring Networks supports a full range of smart grid applications, including the advanced metering and home networking applications being implemented by OG&E. In addition, Silver Spring Networks provides an open, secure, proven, reliable networking platform that will enable OG&E to realize additional operational and environmental benefits in the future.

"This technology has the potential to change the relationship we have with our customers," said Ken Grant, managing director of marketing for OG&E. "It is the key to empowering our customers both with better and more timely information and with the tools they need to respond to this information to better manage their energy usage. When we put this technology into our customers' hands, they understand immediately the value they can obtain from the information provided."

Working with Silver Spring Networks for data acquisition via their Smart Energy Network, Greenbox Technology designed the web-based platform to receive, display and analyze 15-minute interval data for each home every day on a continual basis. Households simply need to log into the website via their browser to understand how and when they are using electricity.