The NYTimes announced that Google is entering “digital technologies that seek to both keep the electrical system on an even keel and reduce electrical energy consumption,” read intelligent metering.
Google is one of a number of companies devising ways to control the demand for electric power as an alternative to building more power plants. The company has developed a free Web service called PowerMeter that consumers can use to track energy use in their house or business as it is consumed.
Google is counting on others to build devices to feed data into PowerMeter technology. While it hopes to begin introducing the service in the next few months, it has not yet lined up hardware manufacturers.
“We can’t build this product all by ourselves,” said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm. “We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions.”
One Comment
Onset offers several devices that monitor power, temperature, sunlight, weather and lots of other stuff – they will even display it in a web site for you. But it’s somewhat expensive as you can spend several hundred dollars on a set up. It’s a far cry from Kill-A-Watt ($20 or so).
I agree measuring power consumption is a good first step to becoming more efficient – but putting the data on the web is the easy part; collecting it in a detailed enough manner to show a consumer that that old refrigerator in your garage is 20% of your electrical bill… that is the difficult part and where the rewards lie.