--- title: Living Smarter, Greener and Cheaper on the Grid description: Residents of one Texas community can see how better information helps them change behavior, reduce waste and save money all at once. canonical: https://time.com/2923969/tracking-carbon-footprints-and-saving-money-the-pecan-street-project/ author: Randy Stearns article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-26T22:48:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T08:57:41.164Z og:title: Here's How Families Can Know More, Waste Less and Save Money og:description: Innovative technology is helping residents of a Texas neighborhood find ways to cut their consumption of electricity, live greener lives and pocket more of their income at the same time. og:url: https://time.com/2923969/tracking-carbon-footprints-and-saving-money-the-pecan-street-project/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44b51c20423b587c/6986999fe8524b4901603a9c/screen-shot-2014-06-27-at-10-06-55-am.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1734 og:image:height: 975 og:image:alt: Screen Shot 2014-06-27 at 10.06.55 AM og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's How Families Can Know More, Waste Less and Save Money twitter:description: Innovative technology is helping residents of a Texas neighborhood find ways to cut their consumption of electricity, live greener lives and pocket more of their income at the same time. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44b51c20423b587c/6986999fe8524b4901603a9c/screen-shot-2014-06-27-at-10-06-55-am.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Tracking Carbon Footprints and Saving Money: The Pecan Street Project > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=9c8477df-c6f7-444b-88ec-d8052120a31a&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Pecan Street: A Glimpse at Greener Future [Watch (HLS stream): Pecan Street: A Glimpse at Greener Future](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eEdjKfFd.m3u8) (4:39)  _Published 2014-06-24. Visit the neighborhood where residents take ownership of their own carbon footprints and save money in the process._ by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns Jun 26, 2014 10:48 PM UTC Visit the neighborhood where residents take ownership of their own carbon footprints and save money in the process. by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns Jun 26, 2014 10:48 PM UTC Walk around the Austin Mueller neighborhood in Texas’s capital city and you’ll see a modern planned, green community with homes that sport solar panels and garages that shelter electric cars. But the most important innovation in these homes can’t be seen by the casual observer. It is the smart circuitry that allows residents to track their homes’ electrical use appliance by appliance, in real time, showing clearly how they consume power and enabling them to reduce their power bills and minimize waste. “You can literally see when a lightbulb is turned on,” says homeowner Dan McAtee. “It’s been educational.” He’s learned, for instance, to lower his monthly utility bill by using his most power-hungry appliances at night, when electricity costs less. And he knows just how much power is generated by the solar panels on his roof — far more than his family consumes, as it turns out, allowing them to send the surplus back into the grid. McAtee’s home is one of more than a thousand participating in the [Pecan Street Project](http://www.pecanstreet.org/), the most extensive smart grid in the United States. Since 2009, the project has provided homeowners incentives for installing renewable energy and buying plug-in electric vehicles, while also helping them reduce their carbon footprints. Across the country, use of two-way “[smart meters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart%5Fmeter)” has been growing, with more than 40 million already in use. Pecan Street meters are far more precise, however and provide both residents and their municipal utility, Austin Energy, with enormous amounts of constantly updated, detailed and actionable data that benefits both individuals and the community. When replicated in [other cities](http://www.pecanstreet.org/projects/smart-grid-demonstration/san-diego-civita-enrollment/), the system may help solve pressing environmental and infrastructure challenges affecting the entire country by making us smarter about how changing individual behavior can benefit society as a whole. ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ]. [00:07] I was first interested in solar in about 1970, and it [00:10] hasn't been affordable. It finally became doable with [00:14] the organization here in the neighborhood. The power [00:17] company, which is Austin Energy, and [ UNKNOWN ]. [00:22] We started out five years ago, as a new research [00:26] institute based in University of Texas. And, our mission [00:28] was to do that original field research that could answer [00:32] the questions about what do people do with these new [00:35] energy technologies. How do they like them? What's [00:37] there impact on the larger energy system? One of the [00:41] things that we noticed back in 2006, 2007, was that [00:45] there wasn't a concentrated community that was really [00:48] focused on developing clean energy technologies. The [00:52] neighborhood is called the Miller Community here in [00:54] Austin, Texas and we got involved after we moved [00:57] here with the Pecan Street project. Just about all of our [01:00] homes are completely normal conventional homes [01:03] where people are doing the same things everybody [01:06] else does. Climate change and the future of our planet [01:10] is in jeopardy you kind of feel a responsibility to do [01:14] what you can do, so any kind of bandwagon we can [01:17] get on to do that, we jump. We can provide some [01:20] significant reduction of our carbon footprint, without [01:23] really serious sacrifices in our lifestyle either. We still [01:26] have lights and heat and air conditioning. We're using [01:30] far less energy than we did, than we did previously. [01:32] [ MUSIC ]. [01:38] As we went along, the selling of it became [01:42] unnecessary. People are more into it now, know about [01:44] it, and solar is popping up on rooftops all over the [01:47] place. It's all you have to do is tell them what your bill [01:49] is for the summer month of July and August when it's [01:52] hotter than you know what outside. They're paying [01:54] $ 300, $ 400, $ 500 a month. And, we're paying [01:58] $ 10. The pace of solar adoption has really [02:01] accelerated. The price of solar panels is dropping [02:03] percipidously and continues to drop. And then, the [02:06] other thing that's happened is you can [ UNKNOWN ] [02:08] solar panels now and you have some certainty that [02:11] you're coming out ahead financially. You suddenly have [02:14] customers when they get solar panels, they're buying [02:17] 60 to 100 % less electricity from the utility than [02:21] they were before their solar panels got adopted. [02:24] That's an existential threat to the old utility business [02:27] models. The purpose of [ UNKNOWN ] really isn't to [02:29] provide solar power. It's to determine what the impact [02:32] of that is on the power grid. One of the things that's [02:35] most interesting to me about the [ UNKNOWN ] project [02:38] is, in my house, which is not instrumented and not part [02:41] of the project, the only information I get about my [02:45] energy usage is my monthly bill. And, it's hard for me [02:48] to disaggregate that into okay, so how much of that [02:50] was the dryer versus the air conditioner versus [02:53] everything else. The equipment we install it's a little [02:56] box with a microprocessor inside of it that goes inside [02:59] of a circuit panel inside of one's house. And then, the [03:02] little clips and circuits you wanna individually measure. [03:05] That data is stored there and it has an internet feed [03:08] out of the customer's internet connection to get it into [03:10] the cloud where we were able to access it. It is the [03:14] largest database, the most powerful set of analytical [03:16] tools anywhere in the world focused on the [03:19] consumption of energy inside the the premises. There [03:23] literally is nothing like the Pecan Street project's [03:26] richness of data that exists anywhere else. We're [03:28] seeing people in real time who are getting information [03:32] in very close to real time about their own energy use. [03:36] And, we're able to see how they adjust their behavior [03:39] in response to that information. Once [03:44] you start to see places that you're using your [03:47] resources, you just kinda step back and don't do that [03:51] anymore. I think what we're seeing is that, more than [03:54] any other product, rooftop solar panels in homes and [03:56] businesses inside of cities is something to keep your [04:00] eye on. The amount of data that the Constreet word [04:02] project is collecting about actual use in the home. And, [04:06] in the premises, not just at the meter, but at the level [04:09] of appliances and circuit is incredibly rich in a day [04:13] from their 1, 200 installations. The concrete project is [04:17] collecting more information than a utility with 2 million [04:20] customers. When we started, we had no idea how far [04:22] we'd go. But it took off and pretty much everyone's [04:25] bought into it, I think it's great. Last year, our electric [04:28] bill was minus $ 630 and we're looking forward to [04:31] more of that. Yes we're saving money, but we're also [04:34] saving the planet. 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