NYC is hax0red
Last week I had the privilege of attending my first ever Yahoo! Open Hack event based in Manhattan’s midtown. So many highlights to mention, here are some: Gabe in a spacesuit, Tikva running Ignite, learning about YQL, Clay’s talk and winning the ‘Hack for Good’ prize with my teammates @ramblezeus and @hsbakshi! Go power trio, maker of Powertrends.
We put two concepts out there. One was technology that aggregated real time energy consumption data and presented the data in a town against town contest. The town that saves the most energy gets money to fix potholes. The towns that lose and save less energy know exactly who didn’t pull their weight 
Secondly, we posed the question, can utilities use social media to predict future consumption trends? We already use Twitter to get our news, can we use indicators of future activity (shows people will watch, events they will attend) to predict electric load? Utilities have an energy storage problem so the more they are right about future load the less dirty plants need to be fired up.
