If you haven’t heard of the Google PowerMeter yet, then you probably would want to read about it on their site (http://www.google.com/powermeter).  In essence, it is a tool that charts your total electricity usage (in watts or by cost) for your home in almost real-time.

Google PowerMeter Sample (Daily Snapshot)

To open a PowerMeter account, all you need is a normal Google account (i.e. if you have a Google Gmail account, you already have one).  It is a free service so there is no charge to use it.  Just go to the website above and register or login to create your account.

This is really a great idea because once you have an account you can view your usage daily, weekly and monthly online using any computer that has access to the Internet. You can also compare usage (i.e. if you want to compare if your electricity usage went up or down in a given time period).  Google even tells you if you are below or above the previous time period.

Another feature is that it also shows you your “Always On” usage.. it basically means the electricity in your house that is always on the whole day.. like plugged in appliances that still suck in some wattage even when you are not using them.  In other words, it shows the lowest wattage in your home the whole day.  If this is high, then you probably need to look around your house to see what is consuming electricity.

Energy monitoring devices/Power Meters

The other piece to this setup though is how to actually gather the electricity usage from your home.  This is where the power meter devices like the Current Cost Envi and TED 5000 (The Energy Detective) and several others come into play.  These devices essentially come with two parts: a power monitor and a receiver.  You hook up the monitor to your house power mains using clamps (no need to cut wires or rewire anything!).  Once that is placed in, it continuously monitors the electricity passing through those wires and passes it to wirelessly to the receiver which gives you a nice real time view of energy usage.

The next thing to do now is just to connect this receiver to the Internet via your DSL/Internet service provider.  This would vary based on the Power meter you selected (i.e. if you will need a USB port to a PC connected to the Internet, or connect wirelessly to your Internet WiFi router, or some other way).  Once that is set up though, you should see your Google PowerMeter graphs showing data… and it will get more interesting by the day….

The disclaimer…

Now, just to be clear, I am not in any way affiliated with any of the companies that make these products but I did decide on going with the Current Cost Envi model due to its features (can link up with Google PowerMeter, can hook up to PC/Internet via USB, possible to monitor more than one monitor, etc) and price point (Goes for about $129). TED seems like a good product too but the price range ($239+) and what it comes with out of the box didn’t really appeal to me.

I really didn’t want to spend a lot more on this because the main point of my doing this was to save money… and if I can spend less on the initial outlay, the faster my return on investment would be for buying this device.

What’s next…

Thanks for reading my post.. my next post will be on how I set up the Current Cost Envi in my home and how I got it connected to the Google PowerMeter… interesting stuff!