Oncor Unveils Green Button Functionality

June 28, 2012
Oncor has become one of the first utilities in the nation to respond to a national initiative as it provides customers with another tool to monitor and manage their energy use as it launches The Green Button on the state's Smart Meter Texas Portal.

Oncor has become one of the first utilities in the nation to respond to a national initiative as it provides customers with another tool to monitor and manage their energy use as it launches The Green Button on the state's Smart Meter Texas Portal. The Green Button is an industry-led effort to provide customers with secure and easy access to their energy usage information from their smart meters in a consumer-friendly and computer-friendly format via a "Green Button" on electric utilities' website.

The Green Button is based on the idea that when consumers have easy access to information on their household energy use, they can make educated decisions that conserve energy and save money. The initiative creates a common data format for the 15-minute power reads collected from residential advanced meters. This nationally-standardized data format allows customers who chose to do so to securely share their data with third party service providers that can analyze and interpret the usage information, spot trends and make personalized recommendations for the household.

"We are very excited about what this means for our customers," Oncor Chief Customer Officer Brenda Jackson said. "The Green Button allows us to further empower our customers with information to save energy and potentially lower their electric bills. It is just another way for us to put the control in the customers' hands."

Oncor began its advanced meter program in 2008. Currently, more than 2.7 million advanced meters have been installed, with a total of more than 3.2 million to be completed by the end of the year. Customers in Oncor's service territory showed last year during the company's Biggest Energy Saver contest that by using the information from Oncor's advanced meter they could reduce their electric usage and bills by 25 percent or more.

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