Google’s philanthropic arm puts a power meter on your desktop

Google continues to work on its power meter project to enable you to monitor your personal power consumption from your desktop. Yesterday they released screenshots of what the power monitoring widgets that reside on your Google home page might look like:

“Google’s Tom Sly also told the listeners on a call held to discuss the tool — among them utilities, device makers and press — that because Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org is running the PowerMeter program, the company is not developing a business model for it. Google is not charging the utility, the customer or the third-party device maker for PowerMeter data access, said Sly, which he said puts the company in a unique position to focus on innovation.”

Last month, Google released a list of utilities it is partnering with to provide beta versions of the Google PowerMeter working with the partnering utilities metering equipment. Those partners include San Diego Gas & Electric, TXU Energy, Wisconsin Public Service, White River Valley Electric Cooperative, JEA, Glasgow EPB, Reliance Energy (India), and Toronto Hydro–Electric System (Canada). According to Google, what all these utilities have in common is that they are all in the process of installing residential smart meters, and they have “a desire to serve their customers by providing access to detailed information that helps save energy and money.””

Via earth2tech.