Google Power meter

I read about this intriguing technology in Digit ,last week! Google’s going household 🙂 Google have just announced an interesting new initiative – Google.org is soon to roll out free software which allows people to track their home electricity use and improve energy efficiency in a bid to help mitigate global warming.Well this is what Google’s gotta say about its objective:

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use.

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” — Lord Kelvin

How much does it cost to leave your TV on all day? What about turning your air conditioning 1 degree cooler? Which uses more power every month — your fridge or your dishwasher? Is your household more or less energy efficient than similar homes in your neighborhood?

Our lack of knowledge about our own energy usage is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity for us all to save money and fight global warming by reducing our power usage. Studies show that access to your household’s personal energy information is likely to save you between 5–15% on your monthly bill, and the potential impact of large numbers of people achieving similar efficiencies is even more exciting. For every six households that save 10% on electricity, for instance, we reduce carbon emissions as much as taking one conventional car off the road (see sources and calculation).

But Google PowerMeter is just a start; it will take lots of different groups working together to create what the world really needs: a path to smarter power.

Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activites :