What is Google PowerMeter
While currently unavailable in SA, I still think its a pretty cool concept. Check it out…
Google PowerMeter is a free electricity usage monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much energy your home is consuming. Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information for you on iGoogle (your personalized Google homepage). Google PowerMeter is free to both utilities and consumers.
Studies show that being able to see your electricity usage in near real time, throughout the day, makes it easier to reduce it and save money. This sort of feedback requires either an advanced electricity meter, a “smart meter,” or a consumer-owned electricity management device, and many of today´s smart meters don´t display information to the consumer.
Consumers should have access to data on their personal electricity use, control who gets to see this data and choose from a range of services to help them understand and benefit from this data. Google is working with federal and state governments to ensure their energy policies encourage consumer information. They hope that consumers will soon be empowered with entire ecosystem of energy information products and services.
Google PowerMeter is a project of Google.org, Google´s philanthropic arm, which aspires to leverage the power of information and technology to address global challenges.
Google PowerMeter allows you to:
- Access – See your electricity use from any Google Powermeter enabled device.
- Learn – Understand more about how you use electricity throughout the day.
- Save – Reduce your electricity use and lower your monthly bills.
Before now, the Google PowerMeter software could only estimate your energy use, unless you happened to be a customer of the handful of utilities it was working with. That has changed. The company announced yesterday that they have partnered with The Energy Detective (TED), allowing you to bypass your utility and get regularly-updated energy use information.
The TED 5000 device costs about $200 and you’ll need an electrician to install it, but once that’s done, it will connect to the internet and feed all your electricity use to the PowerMeter program online at home or via iGoogle on your mobile phone. The TED device sends updates to PowerMeter every 10 minutes compared to regular smart meters which often only display processed energy data only once a day.*
People who already own a TED device can download an upgrade to start using the PowerMeter software.
This partnership is meeting a great need because it lets consumers review their electricity use in real-time, over their own broadband connection, allowing them to make changes to their current energy consumption instead of making changes in hindsight. But the companies aren’t looking to exclude power companies. TED and Google are both still working with utilities to build smart meter networks.
*Currently not available in SA unfortunately
Nicola
x
