Household energy consumers around the globe supported by Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency programs have reached nearly 23-terawatt hours (TWh) in cumulative energy savings. This equates to enough energy to take every household in Osaka off the grid for a year or to charge every personal mobile phone in Japan for 74 years.

The digital revolution has enabled consumers to better control everything from how they shop to how they ride to work. Until relatively recently, however, they lacked the ability to effectively manage their energy usage to lessen both their environmental footprint and monthly energy bills. Opower first introduced its consumer energy efficiency programs to the market in 2008 —including the world’s first behaviorally-informed Home Energy Reports (HERs). These reports use a mix of data analytics and behavioral science to not only help utility customers to understand their energy usage better, but also to empower them to take steps to reduce waste where it makes sense for them to do so. Just ten years later, the 23 TWh savings milestone is a testament to how utilities and their customers have embraced these programs and transformed  behaviors to significantly reduce energy waste and associated carbon emissions.

“Together, with our partners and utility customers, including the Ministry of Environment in Japan, we have given 15 million households around the world access to actionable data that is enabling them to take charge of their energy consumption,” said Scott Neuman, Oracle Utilities’ group vice president for Opower. “With 23 TWh of cumulative savings and counting, we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. It is inspiring to imagine the impact these programs will continue to have in creating a more sustainable energy future, and helping countries such as Japan to reach their projected carbon reduction goals – one household at a time.”

Opower is part of Oracle Utilities, which provides the most complete, modern and integrated platform for the entire utility value chain, from meter to grid to end-customers.

Japanese Households Help Reach Country’s 2030 CO₂ Emission Reduction Goal

Oracle was commissioned in 2017 by Japan’s Ministry of Environment to work with four major utilities across Japan, using the Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency Cloud Service to send  Home Energy Reports (HERs) containing personalized energy usage information and efficiency advice to 60,000 households in each of the five utility territories (a total of 300,000 households) four times during the year.

In April of 2018, the Ministry of Environment reported that households receiving HERs used an average of two percent less energy relative to those not receiving these communications. While this may sound small on the surface, MOE estimated that if all Japanese households saved just two percent throughout the year, this would be the equivalent of replacing 26 million refrigerators (at a cost of roughly 3 trillion JPY), or placing rooftop solar panels on 800,000 homes (at a cost of 1.4 trillion JPY).   

The Opower energy efficiency programs, including Home Energy Reports, are part of a larger Oracle Utilities demand-side management product suite that includes Peak Management, Proactive Alerts, and energy management web tools. Working in tandem, these solutions are designed to inform and motivate consumers to better control their home energy consumption and cost, while allowing utilities to proactively meet regulatory requirements, decrease the cost to serve, reduce call center volume, and improve customer satisfaction. Opower recently expanded their offering to better engage customers as they move towards more distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar, electric vehicles, etc. Learn more here.

Opower is fueled by the world’s largest residential energy data analytics platform with over 1.6 trillion meter reads from more than 60 million households and businesses, and has been deployed across more than 100 utilities.