New Database from Pecan Street, WikiEnergy, Promises to Reveal Important Energy Insights

By Marita Mirzatuny
Mar 12, 2014 2:50 PM ET

New Database from Pecan Street, WikiEnergy, Promises to Reveal Important Energy…

As our society moves deeper into the realms of big data, at times it can seem overwhelming that our actions can generate millions of data points. Therefore, what we do with that data becomes crucial in the new energy landscape, as big data promises to improve our lives by unlocking innovation.

By 2015, 340 million smart meters will be supplying data to utilities worldwide, reading and reporting energy from 15-minute to 1-second intervals. For a medium-sized utility, with a half-million meters, that adds up to 52 billion data point a year. Utilities are not necessarily equipped to interpret this information, and insights can be lost.

Enter the newest arm of Pecan Street, Inc: WikiEnergy.

Pecan Street Research Consortium houses the largest residential energy-use database in the world. From solar energy to electric vehicles and everything in between, they are figuring the dynamics of a smart grid, in real-time, with real residents in multiple cities across the US. Now the data that they have been collecting since 2010 can be utilized by academics and researchers from all over the world on this new website platform. 

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