City homeowners could soon be Googling their power use.

Toronto Hydro has become the first Canadian utility — and one of eight worldwide — to test drive a new Web-based energy management tool developed by Internet search giant Google Inc.

Called Google PowerMeter, the software allows homeowners to see their daily electricity use on a personalized iGoogle home page, along with weather forecasts, news updates and horoscopes.

Google collects the data from utilities that have installed smart meters outside customer homes.

"Everybody uses electricity but not many people stop to think of the impact of that use and how we can be more responsible with our usage," said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.

"Our goal here is to get that information into the hands of users in a way that helps them make smart choices."

Toronto Hydro-Electric System has installed more than 600,000 residential smart meters throughout the city. The first 10,000 of those customers were switched last week to time-of-use pricing, meaning they are charged a premium for power used during peak times and offered a discount during off-peak times.

Google, which argues you can't improve what you can't measure, says it wants to make it easier for power consumers to manage their kilowatt-hours.

Toronto Hydro said today the pilot is limited to a select group of customers — less than 1,000 — and will last a few months. "If successful, Toronto Hydro and Google will then offer the PowerMeter to all Toronto Hydro customers."

Tanya Bruckmueller, a spokesperson for the utility, said the software will initially provide only previous-day usage data. "The intention is to move toward real time," she said, adding that customers will have the option of getting more detailed information directly from Toronto Hydro's own Web site.

Google, which first unveiled its PowerMeter tool in February, has also partnered with six utilities in the United States, including TXU Energy in Texas and San Diego Gas & Electric in California, and one from India.

The search giant's interest in energy management is one of the biggest signs yet that the coming "smart grid" will rely heavily on computer and Internet technologies, a trend that high-tech giants Cisco Systems and IBM have also eagerly embraced.

Likewise, Bell Canada, AT&T and U.S. cable giant Comcast are among the large communications providers growing interested in energy management and smart grid services, based on the belief that broadband networks will play a crucial role.

Cahill said Google's plan is to open up the data it collects to other software developers, similar to how many mapping services today are built on top of Google Maps. "The most important thing to us is to get the data that utilities are collecting through their smart meters back to users," she said.

Richard Oh, president of Toronto-based energy management venture Lixar SRS, said he sees Google as more of a partner than a competitor in the market.

"Google is not only making it easier to access information, they are enabling companies like ours to provide advanced services and tools that build on that data to help the consumer save on energy," he said.

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Lixar SRS is also working with a number of large utilities in Canada and the United States.

They're all betting that homeowners, faced with rising energy prices, will increasingly manage their household energy use just like they manage their finances online, sell items on Craiglist, and keep track of friends and family on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.