Slashdot Mirror
Google Wants To Be Your Electricity Meter
An anonymous reader writes "Google has teamed up with microcontroller maker Microchip to develop an API for a piece of software called Google PowerMeter, according this EE Times story. Why? Because Google wants to host all the details of the electricity and other energy consumption of people's homes. It wants to do this so that it can show people on their iGoogle homepages when and where they are consuming energy so that they can start to reduce their power consumption. The good news is that it is an opt-in service and free so you don't have to make Google your energy-monitor if you don't want to do so."
It's funny that this has little to do with your power bill since you only oay for the unbalanced load between phases. You can draw 40 amps from phase 1 and 50 amps from phase 2, but only get charged for 10 amps. I don't need google to tell me how to save money on my power bill!
Well, they've been doing that for god knows how long, but not in the way you think. You see, most weed groweries bypass the meter so they don't have to pay gargantuan energy bills. So, instead the power company looks at the discrepancy between billing and consumption at the block level. If a large enough discrepancy is noted, i.e. something big, they inform the DEA. Note: I assume they do it like this in the USA, as this is how many countries (including my own) do it.
"It wants to do this so that it can show people on their iGoogle homepages when and where they are consuming energy so that they can start to reduce their power consumption."
Wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong. Google is an advertising company. How the heck is an advertising company doing this?
"The good news is that it is an opt-in service and free so you don't have to make Google your energy-monitor if you dont't want to do so."
Well, isn't that nice of Google! I don't have to let them monitor my energy usage if I don't want to! Thanks for that, faceless corporation.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No, that's not hard. However, I suppose you want a finer grained time resolution, like 5 minutes or so. Otherwise it would be practically impossible to determine which apparatus is causing more-than-normal energy consumption.
But that was with the old way of using Metal Halide that you needed 10 1000 watt lamps to grow with. Now with flouresent and LED setups you dont need a whole lot more.
No I dont grow pot. I have a reef tank. Seeing my energy bill drop by $100.00 a month by switching to LED and FLouresent new tech fro mthe Metal halides I was using was really nice. It also has a side benefit of my corals are doing WAY better and I dont need to run a chiller anymore.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
These devices are starting to get common in Europe (and maybe elsewehere) - they are called smart meters. They will be required for a smart grid which in turn is presumed to be required for mass deployment of electric cars. These devices are neither new nor did google invent something that hasn't existed before.
Google already partnered with some utilities, and a few device makers (about 7 months ago). Most utilities are slow to provide opt-in to their customers. But anyone can install and watch their whole house power and consumption.
For example, the TED installs at your house main. It happens to send data to Google PowerMeter in the cloud (an App Engine application it seems.)
Right now, it is only one-way. Simply provides monitoring. Nothing can be controlled. You see your 10-minute average power in an iGoogle Gadget. As well as weekly and monthly total consumption, with a couple basic comparisons. In fact, the TED had an API, so anyone can read the second-by-second power readings and build your own charting application, or load a spreadsheet, or use the built-in browser to see gauges of power, etc. So, to make it easier for device manufactures to provide usage data (probably not just electric, but gas and water as well), why not a chip that can be embedded into your device designs.
For those who have not seen Google PowerMeter, tinypic sample here.
Reading this, I figured Google were setting up the most ridiculously elaborate burglary scheme ever. They've cased the outside of your house with Google Earth, maps and street view. They know you've bought a big shiny new plasma TV via your search history and Google pay, and they even know where it's located in your house because of the Youtube video you posted of your sweet media setup. They also see you've been looking at holidays and now suddenly they can tell your electricity usage has dropped indicating you're away from home...