Google wants to help folks use less power by empowering them with real time information about their energy usage.



[Remix of a Creative Commons photo by John Wilson]

There’s a famous quote from Lord Kelvin: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” When it comes to lowering your energy consumption, Google says, “You CAN measure it, you CAN improve it.” Folks who monitor their home energy usage are, on average, able to reduce their consumption by 5-15%. That adds up! For every six households that save the median amount of energy through monitoring, it’s the equivalent of taking one car off the road. Imagine if, instead of just six, there were millions of households! That’s Google’s plan.



The California-based company wants to empower folks to save energy by giving them the tools to monitor their power consumption. They’re developing the Google PowerMeter which will work as a secure, real-time gadget on your Google homepage. The widget will give updates on energy usage, allowing you to see where and when your energy use is greatest, so you can lower consumption. Even better: they’re planning to make it totally free.

Google started out with a small pilot program and are planning to eventually roll out the PowerMeter for everyone. The tool requires that your home have a smart energy meter, which they say that over 40 million homes will have within the next three years thanks to the government stimulus package (pdf). You can read some quotes from users in the PowerMeter pilot program on their demo page. This one, from one of their software engineers, struck me as the most impressive:

I don’t own a toaster and because I live by myself, I’ve always used my standard electric oven to toast bread. After seeing the power spikes from my sunday breakfasts, I did a little research on the power required to toast bread using a toaster compared to an electric oven and found that toasting bread in an oven uses 33 times as much energy as a typical toaster! With this savings, I realized that I would save money (not to mention time) by buying a toaster.

It really shows what a big difference you can make with such a tiny change. Read more about Google’s PowerMeter on Clean Technica!