Google's PowerMeter

One of the first things that anyone needs to do in order to conserve energy is to actually find out how much energy they are using in the first place. The idiom, you can’t improve what you don’t measure rings true across the all types of infrastructure, including data centres, telecoms networks and, for Google, the average household.

The search giant is getting ready to launch what it calls the PowerMeter, a web-based application that will monitor and report energy for homes equipped with suitable appliances and devices. The application is currently in beta and being tested by Google staff. Find out how it works here.

Google’s PowerMeter at work

The concept is not new. Microsoft and German nuclear utility, Yello Strom, introduced a similar service last year called the Yello Sparzahler. At the time, neither Yellow nor Microsoft specified exactly how they would gather the information or distinguish different energy draws, such as how they would tell the fridge from the washer. From the initial statements from the companies, the Sparzahler merely takes the reading from the meter and shows it on a web-based gadget on Vista in real time. Presumably, you can see spikes in the meter when you turn on your TV to determine the energy being consumed.

With the Google PowerMeter, the company offers a more in-depth technical description, noting that appliances will have to be built with some kind of client software that will then supply the energy use information to smart meters who then forward the information to the PowerMeter service.

Google goes as far as to state bluntly that it is looking to work with device manufacturers as well as the utility companies to forward the PowerMeter initiative. You can check out Google’s blog post on the initiative here.

According to Google, one of the key motivations behind the initiative is that it will help users optimise their energy consumption. The company cites studies that show giving users such information will lead to between 5%-15% reduction in the amount of energy they consume.

“It may not sound like much, but if half of America’s households cut their energy demand by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road,” Google writes on its blog.

Obviously, there’s a lot that needs to be done in this area, and changing government policy is among the first ones.

“We’re tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies. We’ve been participating in the dialogue in Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world to advocate for investment in the building of a ‘smart grid’, to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to provide both consumers and utilities with real-time energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced energy meters called ‘smart meters’,” the company said, adding that there are currently about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.

More importantly perhaps, if the model is adopted on a widespread basis, it leads to more than just smart meters for energy consumption. With devices connected to a centralize control unit and to the Internet, it brings to reality to the ‘smart home.’ The PowerMeter will not only serve as a monitoring program for energy, but really a platform to bring intelligent homes to market. If you can see what energy your appliances are drawing, it just makes sense to also have the ability to control them.

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Tags: Google, intelligent homes, microsoft, PowerMeter, Sparzahler, Yellow Strom

Category: Applications, Climate change, Global energy, Networks