A team at Cornell University is working on a way to bring more control to electric customers with an app.

It can be tough to know exactly how much electricity is being used on a daily or weekly basis, but having more control of your electricity could mean saving money and conserving energy.

Using the subscription-based app begins by choosing a target payment amount for each month and the app will start giving recommendations to help meet that goal. Then, users can see if their usage is low, medium, or high, based on their goal for the month.

Madhur Srivastava, assistant professor at Cornell University, said he began this project because he had higher electric bills in the winter than the summer, and wanted more consistency in his bill.

“We are bringing control to the user and saying that I choose my own price, I know what my bills are going to be, and I also know what my consumption pattern is," said Srivastava.

Users can even monitor the levels of usage for individual appliances. If consumption for the day is a little high, a notification can recommend specific ways to use less electricity; like adjusting when laundry is done, or when a car is charged.

“You should know what prices you’re paying. You should have control over your prices. We have control over, we know what our rent should be, we have control over if we got a restaurant and buy a thing or not, we have control over groceries. Electricity bills, and maybe internet bills are the only bills we don’t have control over," said Srivastava.