Beckon is an energy concierge app - your personal money saving assistant. It’s the fast, easy way to get a handle on home energy. Through Ontario’s Green Button initiative, Beckon securely connects with your home’s smart meter data and updates automatically every day. Beckon starts working instantly, providing you the insight and guidance to make better energy choices a snap.

Here’s how:

Avoid the peak, know when it’s cheap - Beckon’s Time-Of-Use alerts help you take advantage of lower prices and avoid overpaying.

The total price of power for any hour - Beckon factors in all the costs like delivery and taxes, showing you the total price you pay.

What the heck? Keep spending in check - Set a reminder amount for the month and Beckon lets you know when you’ve reached it.

See the all around breakdown - Your monthly spending and usage broken down in a way that simply makes sense.

Dare to compare - See how your home stacks up to similar homes near you, challenge friends and compete.

Smart scripts deliver personal tips - Beckon learns what’s important to you and delivers personalized energy saving tips.

The power’s out give em’ a shout - Information to connect with your utility about outages, conservation programs and more.

With time-of-use prices, electricity costs fluctuate throughout the day. Beckon keeps you informed as prices change with handy alerts. Based your preferred WiFi connection, Beckon remembers to only send them when it works for you - like any good concierge would.

An energy expert so you don’t have to be, Beckon decodes confusing energy bills. Delivery, transmission, line loss adjustment, debt retirement charge, regulatory charge, HST and the Clean Energy Benefit - all figured out for you. Since time-of-use electricity prices typically make up only 40-50% of the total bill, Beckon factors in the other charges to show you the total price you pay per kilowatt-hour.

Get the bigger picture in a glance and quickly spot your household’s spending and usage trends. Gain insight into the past, present and future months to get a handle on where the opportunities may be for improvement. See how individual cost items compare to the total monthly bill and usage broken down by off, mid and on-peak relative to total consumption.

How your home uses energy helps Beckon curate a library of energy conservation tips that include rankings based on the potential for savings and effort required. They can be easily added to your to-do list for when you are ready to tackle them. Need some motivation to act? Compare your energy use to homes nearby, start or join a team and compete in team challenges. Together we can be more effective with how and when we use energy so we stay on track, without compromising quality of life!

Basic information about your electricity provider is available in Beckon. We invite leading utility companies to get involved using Beckon as a platform to provide valuable power outage, restoration and customer service updates. Keeping Gridizens™ (citizens of the grid) informed creates a compelling opportunity for us all to work together towards a better energy future for Ontario.

FAQs

Why the name Beckon? Besides the idea of being beckoned the real inspiration is well known Ontarian, Sir Adam Beck. He was a successful entrepreneur at the turn of the last century. The cigar box maker, horse breeder and racer entered politics and donated his salary to worthy causes in his London, ON community. He brought power from the white coal of Niagara Falls deep into south central Ontario, revolutionizing the provinces economy and improving the quality of life for its citizens. He believed in sharing the possibilities of electricity with the people and delivering the fruits of our natural wealth at cost. Beckon is inspired by Sir Adam Beck, connecting all people (moms, dads, students, kids, hipsters and grandparents - not just utility account holders) with their energy. We hope Sir Adam Beck would be proud of what we are doing with energy in Ontario, and how the Green Button Initiative is putting our power in the palm of your hand.

Beck + Ontario = Beckon.

Why an elephant guys? For starters, elephants are revered and majestic, known to create deep emotional relationships; much like the ones we strive for with our users - who inspire us to to build great products. Elephants have the notorious ability to remember every detail, much like Beckon does sifting through piles of data to find and remember the things that matter most to the user. Just thinking about an elephant running across the Savanna is bound to make you smile, even chuckle. We know Beckon is a powerful app and more importantly, a delight to use.

Who built the app? Beckon has been created for the Ontario Ministry of Energy’s ‘Energy Apps for Ontario Challenge’ in partnership with MaRS. It is a proof of concept demonstration of what is possible by making use of the ‘Ontario Green Button Initiative’ connect my data standard. Beckon’s development was led by Ottawa based EnergyMobile Studios Inc., with support from Oakville’s Inovex Inc. and Paris’ Slide Communications.

Who sings that catchy song in the video? That’s Tim McMorris’ own ‘A Beautiful Life‘ - he’s a talented artist/producer/composer from Niagara Falls Ontario.