# Home Energy Calculator

**Year:** 2010–2011
**Role:** Designer, illustrator
**At:** Pentagram — Lisa Strausfeld's team
**Client:** General Electric (Ecomagination)
**Tags:** stories-and-dataviz
**Case study:** /work/ge-energy-calculator
**MoMA object page:** https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/150000/

An interactive visualization built for GE's Ecomagination environmental-awareness
and education program. It takes two abstractions almost nobody can price — the
watt and the kilowatt-hour — and restates them as things a homeowner already has
an intuition for: dollars, gas, days.

It was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art's *Talk to Me: Design and the
Communication between People and Objects* (2011), and is part of MoMA's permanent
collection.

## What it did

Commonly used household appliances are laid out as a grid of icons ordered by
consumption. Three controls reframe the same dataset:

- **Unit** — wattage, dollars, gas usage, or kilowatt-hour performance.
- **Time period** — per year, per month, or per day.
- **State** — energy prices vary by geography, so the answer does too.

A running total sits at the bottom of the grid, so the ranking is also a bill.

A second mode answers the decision the ranking implies: if you replace this
appliance with an Energy Star model, does it pay for itself, and when? Given the
age and class of the appliance you already own, the calculator returns a payback
period in years — and states plainly that the figure excludes the energy spent
manufacturing, shipping, and recycling the appliance.

![The calculator ranking appliances by annual cost, with a tooltip reading "Coffee machine $24.56"](/work/ge-energy-calculator/calculator.gif)

## MoMA's description

> Part of General Electric's Ecomagination environmental-awareness and education
> program, this website helps put energy consumption into perspective by
> expressing abstract measurements—watts and kilowatt-hours—in an easily
> understandable form. Commonly used appliances appear in descending order of
> wattage consumption, cost, gas usage, or kilowatt-hour performance; energy
> usage can be estimated by year, month, or day. The program lets homeowners
> know when an upgrade to an energy-efficient Energy Star appliance will save
> money—and how long it will take for the savings to kick in.

![The entrance wall of the Talk to Me exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art — photo from Interventions Journal](/work/ge-energy-calculator/moma-talk-to-me.jpg)
![Visitors at the Museum of Modern Art using the calculator in the Talk to Me exhibition](/work/ge-energy-calculator/moma-visitors.jpg)

## Recognition

- Museum of Modern Art permanent collection; exhibited in *Talk to Me* (2011)
- Type Directors Club TDC 57
- AIGA 365: Design Effectiveness (2011)
- Selected for AIGA's Design Archives

## Credits

Lisa Strausfeld, creative director. Hilla Katki, lead designer. Michael Deal,
designer, illustrator. Adam Suharja, developer.

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