The case for open data sets

UtilityAPI has already worked with the City of Oakland, CA to pull electricity data for city owned buildings. The data has been used in hackathons, but an open data set of the electricity consumption of city or university buildings can be used in and out of the classroom. It's a great way to educate technical majors about the opportunities in sustainability/energy.

Data science classes - Open, clean data sets are an important part of any curriculum. Students could use the open data set for class projects. When I was earning my certificate in Econometrics from UCSD, there was nothing better than a cool, clean set of data I could use.

Sustainability courses and programs - Baseline data will make project more real for sustainability majors, masters candidates, and certificate candidates. In the curriculum, it can be used for projects related to:

• Writing a sustainability plan
• Measuring an organization's environmental impact
• Improving an organization's carbon footprint and impacts on human health and ecosystems

Hackathons - City, university, or pure-tech events could list open electricity data sets for use in hackathons. Hack NYU is all about turning cool ideas into reality. What would be cooler than some energy-saving apps? I like to get energy related ideas out into the tech community. The data set could be used as demo data to build an app or software. 

Interested in working with UtilityAPI to pull an open set for your organization? Email info[at]utilityapi.com. 

​Cheers,
Elena