OK, call me a geek, but I often daydream about having a self-efficient, smart home someday. Here's one of the many topics I spend my nights thinking about when I can't sleep. I have always wanted to know where I consume the most electricity in my home. Without going into details, I know I'm a power hog, but I've always thought it would be nice to know how much it costs to keep my hot tub heated at 100 degrees as opposed to 98 degrees. Having the power company control my thermostat remotely just doesn't work for me since it is occupied most of the day. Plus, AC is just one component to my overall consumption. Needless to say, Google's announcement today of their new power meter initiative gets me excited! Read more here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.htmlhttp://www.google.org/powermeter/
2 comments:
Have you played with one of
these before?
Not exactly what you're looking for, but it could be a start.
I've actually spent my nights thinking about how nice it would be to have these meters integrated into every outlet that feeds the real-time data through an X-10 type system where the information gets logged on my (future) home network server, where I can view real-time consumption or generate time period reports and graphs. Even having a "smart meter" at the circuit board that captures consumption at the circuit level would help. Until then, I will get one of these tools for curiosity sake...and better sleep at night! Thanks for sharing. This is a useful tool.
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