I’m not sure if there has been any talk about the Social Grid but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it. When I say Social Grid, I mean managing and sharing energy usage online. Bleeding edge developers and early adopters of technology are not averse to sharing their energy usage online. But if the internet is going to be a reliable and secure tool for managing energy usage by the mass market, there are various attributes required.

The social grid is a reality now, with the Government about to start trialling a social networking type system for a small sample of communities spread across the UK. Each community will compete and compare energy usage.

So with this in mind, here is my attempt at defining the social grid. This is very much a work in progress, which no doubt will be added over time and discussed and criticised etc. I look forward to peoples thoughts on these initial points. Let’s try and shape the future of energy monitoring.

In the Social Grid

1.  The user is boss and can restrict or share energy usage data as they wish
2.  Data is anonymous for public consumption on the internet and in comparison tables
3.  Monitoring devices and hardware must be low power
4.  Integration with online services for mashup analysis of data like the AMEE API
5.  A user can share real, anonymous, randomised or event driven data to users or groups of users with online services
6.  Cross platform and cross device