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SmallBizResource Blog -- Green


Google PowerMeter Might Be Worth Your Energy

Posted by Gayle Kesten Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009, 03:36 PM ET

A home-office-based friend of mine is fanatical about unplugging all of the outlets in his house when they're not in use. No doubt he's cutting down on his electric bill, but his family is, let's say, a little less gung-ho, especially when, TV remote in hand, they sink into the couch and find it doesn't work because the power strip is turned off. On the other side of the room.

To figure out how much is being saved, they're now experimenting with leaving all of the plugs in the wall for one month to see how much more their bill will be. (My friend realizes cheating when no one is home will only hurt his case, and I'm sure he has one -- it's just the extreme behavior that's the issue.) Time will tell, or perhaps they can leave the answer up to Google, which last night gave word about its own experieent: a forthcoming software tool in private beta that monitors electricity use, by appliance, via smart meters that gauge energy consumption.

Google PowerMeter, now in internal testing, "hooks up with smart meters to provide simple, clear real-time graphs of electricity use," reports Fast Company. "You can post the gadget on your iGoogle homepage and share with friends to encourage competition."

Access to that information -- which includes day-by-comparisons, as well as historical views of peaks and troughs -- can lead to savings of 5% to 15% on monthly bills (PDF), according to the Environmental Change Institute and cited on Google's blog. "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 8 million cars off the road," the blog goes on to state.

The push for Google PowerMeter is for the home, which would also mean microbusinesses and home-office workers, for whom every dollar counts.

I'll let you know how both experiements pan out. In the meantime, this video from Google discusses the cost-savings realized by some of its testers.

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