Google PowerMeter-See Your Electricity Usage Online
Google will announce its entry Tuesday into the small but growing business of “smart grid,” digital technologies that seek to both keep the electrical system on an even keel and reduce electrical energy consumption.
Google is one of a number of companies devising ways to control the demand for electric power as an alternative to building more power plants. The company has developed a free Web service called PowerMeter that consumers can use to track energy use in their house or business as it is consumed.
Google is counting on others to build devices to feed data into PowerMeter technology. While it hopes to begin introducing the service in the next few months, it has not yet lined up hardware manufacturers.
“We can’t build this product all by ourselves,” said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm. “We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions.”
“Smart grid” is the new buzz phrase in the electric business, encompassing a variety of approaches that involve more communication between utility operators and components of the grid, including transformers, power lines, customer meters and even home appliances like dishwashers.
“They’ve been putting a chip in your dishwasher for a long time that would allow you to run it any time you want,” said Rick Sergel, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group that sets operating standards for the grid.
If the utility could “talk” to the dishwasher, it might tell the machine to run at 2 a.m. and not 2 p.m., or it might tell the homeowner how much money would be saved by running the dishwasher at a different hour.
“It provides an opportunity to create dancing partners that will help the system balance itself,” he said.
It also might be useful for plug-in hybrid cars, which will draw significant amounts of energy, perhaps doubling the electric demand of a small household. A smart grid would recognize the car wherever it was plugged in, the way a cellphone network recognizes a mobile phone when it is turned on.
The grid could bill the owner of the car for recharging the battery no matter where the car was plugged in. It would charge the owner a rate based on the time of day or night. If the car were left plugged in, the grid could decide when to charge it at the lowest rate.
The stimulus bill now going to a House-Senate conference committee has allocated $4.4 billion for “smart” technologies, including four million of these next-generation monitors, called smart meters. Proponents say that could make more effective use of existing power lines and generate employment.
“You can hire a lot of people to install smart meters,” said James Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has some jurisdiction over transmission lines.
Source: New York Times
Read more about Smart Grid Promises and Challenges
We must not forget that the smartest technology is the type we can avoid the need for. I’m referring to the electric grid power we may not need if the load for that power can be obtained through other non-poluting means, and in a much more efficient way.
The DOE has determined that over half of energy consumed in this country is for heating of; water, spaces, processes, cleaning. This water heating energy can be accomplished by direct solar collection at a far greater efficiency, in dollars for technology and in the actual efficiency of the conversion of given solar collection area to heat gain. That is, greater than PV or wind by a factor of 3 to 4, and the case could be made that any money spent on solar electricity that is used for heating purposes is money wasted.
Yet, the press and government plaudits constantly repeat the benefits of renewable electricity for every renewable venture, while the much more practical heating uses beg for ways to be learned about and implemented.
We must realize that a great deal of the electric grid build out would be unnecessary if most of our heating needs could be laid off onto distributed solar energy. This expansion may not benefit the politicians and the utilities and most certainly the fuel, PV, and wind industries, but would certainly benefit the environment, people, and businesses of the USA and the world.
You’re absolutley rigth that there is much to be saved with onsite generation of both electricity and hot water. But a grid that recognizes the load, the hourly price structure and how to optimize the runiing of air conditioning, refrigerators, freezers, etc. are another piece of the reduction puzzle. Your more likely to reap savings from upgraded appliances before you’d see a whole sale conversion to solar water water or absorption chiller derived cooling/ refrigeration. Promote all efficienct technologies and behaviors