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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!
http://www.microsoft-hohm.com/
Who's following who?
Google just announced an API for PowerMeter http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-powermeter-api-introduced-for.html , so Adafruit's Tweet-a-Watt can brag to your followers about your home efficiency. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/03/04/google-code-blog-google-powermeter-api-introduced-for-device-manufacturers/
Now the Man can monitor consumption and infer when a weed growing operation is up and running.
Note electricity consumption, cruise by with thermal cameras to verify, profit!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Such a thing (on-line electricity meter) already exists: Flukso
Linux-based with wifi uplink to the net and ethernet to configure it. Handles internet-connection downtime gracefully. Completely open so that you can tweak it if you wish to.
www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
There already exist devices which allow you to monitor your energy consumption by monitoring the dials in your meter box. For instance the dutch http://www.enymate.nl/artikelen/enymate_lite.
Because this measures consumption by looking at the dial it is also possible to monitor gas and water consumption, and the measurements relate directly to the upcoming bill(s).
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the linked company.
they'll find a way to dynamically alter the ads we're shown using this thing now too
Check your electricity meter.
Check it again the next day.
Subtract the 2 values.
Really , is this so difficult for some people that they need a gadget to do it for them?
I seem to remember that elsewhere it was said that Google wanted to enter the power market. They are a pretty big consumer themselves and are apparently looking to be a supplier but as yet, are not a producer.
Energy trading is a complex game. Perhaps they hope to get a better advantage by themselves getting better knowledge of how much power people are busing and when.
Google Shit (TM)
No need to wait, the future is now! Google Shit (TM) is already available under the code name Youtube(TM).
"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!
This makes sense when you consider Google and their relentless pursuit of reducing their energy bill.
A lot of people have no idea how much electricity they are consuming, except at the end of the month. Increasing awareness will encourage people to turn off unused lights in their house (and get the instant gratification of seeing the electricity consumption graph go down on their homepage). This serves a dual purpose. Cutting down on consumption will mean a surplus of electricity, which lowers the price. Google gets cheaper electricity, and it also helps the environment.
I don't think Google is particularly interested in selling your electric power consumption data, although they might want to look at large-scale statistical data for their own research.
Has it become fashionable to not even read TFS now? It specifically says "opt in service", ie. if you find the intrusion of privacy unacceptable, you don't have to sign up. There is NOTHING morally wrong about any of this.
Am I the only one who is skeptical of these smart meter devices? I don't want hackers to be shut off my power or anything else.
Actually, yes I do. Throughout the day the cost of power varies widely. At night it is dirt cheap (because it is produced at a coal or nuclear or hydro power plant) but during the day more plants have to be brought online and shut down as the load varies. That makes it very expensive at some times during the day. For residential consumers, this just gets averaged and they get pretty much a flat rate (some places have a time based tier system). But, if I got charged the current price for power, and could have my house decrease or increase power consumption based upon that price, then my cost would go down, and the total cost of the power grid would go down (because the load is more stable). I don't think they should have the ability to force me to turn off any appliance, but it would be good for the whole system if you let the free market determine the price of power through consumers setting their own limits of which appliances can be running at different price points.
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...