Katie Fehrenbacher writing for GigaOm:

Nest’s learning thermostats have collectively saved over 200 million kilowatt hours of energy since they were launched back in October 2011, says the startup. That’s about the equivalent amount of energy to power the Empire State building for four years, and which Nest says is a figure that blew their minds when they calculated it. […]

In comparison software energy leader Opower, which processes data from more than 50 million homes, says it’s saved over 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of energy, or enough energy to power the Empire State Building for more than 33 years. But Opower saves much smaller energy percentages per home — or on average about 1.5 to 3.5 percent reduction on an energy bill.

GigaOm

The numbers are interesting for the low roll-out that both services have achieved yet. Further, both services are just first iterations of a larger trend that will increasingly apply data-driven insights to questions of efficiencies.

We’re only just starting to see what connected devices truly mean for energy.