Google.org wants to organize your power usage statistics

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I for one would be very interested in knowing my usage patterns. This privacy issue is being overated - who cares and who cares if they know? I suppose if you were running a pot greenhouse in your home your energy patterns would show it... I guess a laptop and a clamp-on meter would do the job.

"Citizen X1Z5, the environmental commissariat allows 1 hour of television viewing a day. You have gone over your limit by 5 minutes. Report to the re-education camp Monday morning for 1 year of re-indoctrination."

Anyone fairly skilled in electronic engineering, as many of the readers here are; could come up with their own system that would do the same on their personal laptop, while maintaining privacy. Just measure RMS amps (using a clamp-on loop?)and volts, multiply together, and store the value. There are A-to-D packages that will interface to a USB port. The main problem is that the laptop must be connected during the period of time you want to make the readings. This can be solved with a dedicated memory storage unit, but now it starts getting more complicated. There are probably already pre-made units on the market to do this, but I didn't have time to do a seach.

1. What transports the data from the meters? If it's HF BPL, then in the name of energy conservation we are polluting irreplaceable RF spectrum for short-term benefit. Isn't that the same argument made against other pollution??? Would like to see another transport mechanism that makes better use of spectrum. 2. Those concerned about BB and privacy might as well surrender. Didn't you figure out already that BB BUYS the data it needs from commercial entities, who are already busy collecting it? Wanna opt out? Fine...the fact that you did is easily correlated from comparing tax rolls to opt-in participants. If your existence is recorded ANYWHERE, then your behavior is reasonably-well discerned not only from where else you ARE recorded, but from where else you are NOT.

For those of you so concerned that "big brother" is watching you, consider the math. There are 300 million Americans and if someone devoted 1 second of "watch time" per person, it would take over 9 1/2 years to watch each person in this country. Even our own government isn't THAT wasteful of our money.

Is this legal? The only parties who should be privy to the usage info is the power company and myself - not some nosy neighbors/surfer or some govt entity.

The Power Companies knows what your power usage currently and your history of usage - that's how they plan their generation for each day. What makes you think they don't share YOUR information with "others"? If you are worried about a Big Brother watching you, generate your own power! I believe this would be a good tool to help you analyze your usage and help you cut your costs for electricity.