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By George Norman - Software News Editor

Added on 21 May 2009(677 Views)

For people on a tight budget, cutting some costs is a welcomed initiative; if the costs you plan to cut down are related to you power (electricity) bill, then you are not only saving money, you are saving the environment as well. Google is no stranger to being eco-minded and taking care of the environment (see Google Goats 200), but on top of that, it wants to help you out as well by releasing a tool called Google PowerMeter - which may save you between 5% and 15% off your monthly power bill.

Google PowerMeter was introduced to the world back in February and at the time the Mountain View search engine giant had this to comment: “We're working on a tool called Google PowerMeter which will show consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget. We think PowerMeter will offer more useful and actionable feedback than complicated monthly paper bills that provide little detail on consumption or how to save energy.”


Since then we haven’t heard anything new regarding PowerMeter, but this does not mean Google has not been working on it. Ed Lu, from the Google Engineering Team, has now announced that for the past months the team has been “looking to partner with utilities that are installing (or have already installed) this equipment [smart meters] in their customers' homes.”

“Our initial partners include utilities with millions of customers as well as smaller ones. They are rural and urban, privately held and municipally run. Some are in the United States, others in Canada and India. They all have one thing in common — a desire to serve their customers by providing access to detailed information that helps save energy and money. For now, Google PowerMeter is only available to a limited group of customers, but we plan to expand our roll out later this year. Our utility partners are leading the charge to make the electricity grid smarter and we look forward to working with them and others,” says Ed Lu.

The Google PowerMeter partners mentioned above are:
San Diego Gas & Electric® (California)
TXU Energy (Texas)
JEA (Florida)
Reliance Energy (India)
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (Wisconsin)
White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri)
Toronto Hydro–Electric System Limited (Canada)
Glasgow EPB (Kentucky)





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Via: googleblog.blogspot.com

Tags: Google, PowerMeter, Partners

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