We can’t all have a cute, long-suffering doctor as our sidekick like Sherlock does (he totally doesn’t deserve you, boo!). But at least there’s Wattson, an app billed as “your personal energy butler.” Built by a team of four in Toronto, Ontario, Wattson hooks up to your account with your electric company and graphs your energy use, illustrating when you use the most juice and encouraging you to cut back:
Wattson also shows you your consumption during high-peak and low-peak hours so, ideally, you can shift most of your usage to cheaper, low-peak times. After seeing the spikes in your energy use, you can tag them with the appropriate activity, like “laundry.” The app also hooks you up with energy-saving products like LED lights.
And since sometimes numbers are boring, Wattson can translate your electricity cutbacks to barrels of oil saved or number of trees planted, giving you a better idea of just how awesome you are for taking a shorter shower. The app also calculates how many solar panels you’d require for your electricity needs.
And no, like Martin Freeman, this Wattson isn’t the first. It’s also the name of a circa-2006 home energy meter. We’ll let them battle it out over which one is Stupid Wattson, but we think they’re both pretty smart.
