Google rolls out UK smart-meter cloud service

Everyone's favourite advertising company, Google, has today announced the UK roll out of its "PowerMeter" home-electricity-consumption cloud service. The idea is that users of certain home 'leccy meters will for some reason read them via Google's servers, rather than using the online services that come with the meters. Google's two UK "partners" are first:utility, a small energy-trading firm which offers free smart meters to customers on one of its tariffs, and AlertMe, a hardware maker which sells a sensor that clips onto existing meters and connects to a home broadband connection. In both cases, users are able to read full electricity usage data on company servers. Now, however, such customers can also see the information on their iGoogle homepage if they so choose. Any user of Google online services - eg GMail - has such a homepage, even if they never normally look at it. There are other ways to view one's home electricity consumption online - it is quite possible for the tech-savvy to put meter data on servers running on their own equipment, and so avoid disclosing the information to companies who might use it to make money. There will also soon be competition for Google from Microsoft, whose Hohm kit is in US beta. Hohm will monitor gas usage as well as 'leccy, potentially an attractive feature for UK customers, who typically use more kilowatt-hours of gas than they do of electricity.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/28/google_power_meter_uk/