google.org and ge announced a partnership this week in creating a platform for measuring and affecting individual use of electricity with powermeter. using networked analytics that give detailed information on energy consumption as well as compare your usage with your friends or neighbourhoods, this positions google and ge to provide proactive green benefits to the consumer as they hack the grid, as well as creating a rich database of behavioural metrics that can and will inform the nature of near/far consumer products and platforms. from the site:
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).
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.
h/t to @avantgame
