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Google to Let Users Monitor Their PowerMeters
Google's been working on software that will help homeowners track their energy usage in near real time. Called PowerMeter, the iGoogle widget draws electricity consumption data from smart meters and presents it using the search giant's familiar charting conventions.
Here's what Ed Lu of the PowerMeter Engineering Team writes in the google.org blog:
Over the last several months, our engineers have developed a software tool called Google PowerMeter, which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available to the public since we're testing it out with Googlers first. But we're building partnerships with utilities and independent device manufacturers to gradually roll this out in pilot programs. Once we've had a chance to kick the tires, we'll make the tool more widely available.
It will have a social component as well. Users will be able to post and compare their consumption data. I can see this becoming a neat competition among enviro-geeks akin to Prius hypermiling. More importantly, it might encourage people to experiment with their electrical usage and find ways to cut back. According to Google, studies "studies show that access to home energy information results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity bills."
In many households, that 5-15% can translate into a nice chunk of change!
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With PowerMeter, Google is validating the valuable role of energy monitoring in empowering end users with the information they need to take control of their personal energy consumption. I work with Fat Spaniel Technologies (www.fatspaniel.com), and we absolutely support Google’s stated principle that “open protocols and standards should serve as the cornerstone of smart grid projects” (from their blog). Last year we announced the industry’s first open energy monitoring solution – the Fat Spaniel Insight Platform™. We believe that in order to provide users with a complete energy solution, it must be an open platform that can monitor all devices and systems and distill the data into usable information. As such, Fat Spaniel will extend its open, standardized interface to Google’s PowerMeter once it is publicly released. We currently provide the monitoring technology for more than 2,000 renewable energy plants across 17 countries today, and we think that Google’s validation of the energy monitoring market will help spread the technology for adoption across all energy systems universally.