Google has developed a new tool that lets people see how much electricity they're consuming--knowledge that they hope, says
Forbes, will incite many people to cut back on their power use. A
team of about 30 people, which the search giant hopes to expand to more than 200 very shortly, is currently developing the software product. The Mountain View, Calif. Web giant is partnering with a
host of electric utilities, deice makers, regulators and other tech companies to deliver the data to consumers.
Forbes assumes that one of those companies is Silver Spring Networks,
a Silicon Valley company that is making technology to upgrade the nation's very old electric grid. Google on Monday confirmed that it had made an investment in Silver Spring, although it declined to
provide any more details. Other tech giants, including IBM and Cisco, are also trying to create technology that will improve the grid. For example, Forbes says utilities can't currently get
information about outages and power spikes, and most consumers have no idea how much it costs to use power at certain times of the day.
Google's new PowerMeter tool aims to fix all that.
PowerMeter is a piece of software that allows people to view online how much electricity they're using every time they plug in a device and leave it running for a certain period of time. As ever,
Google doesn't have any concrete plans on how to make money from PowerMeter, but Kristen Olsen Cahill, Google's product manager with Google.org, suggests this is yet another product that will drive
traffic to the company's Web site. She added that if 5.3 million people used the new tool and cut back their electricity consumption by 10%, they would save enough to power a large city.
Read the whole story at Forbes.com »