Makes It Even Easier to Manage and Reduce Electricity Wastage

By continuously updating total energy usage in real time, users can see the effect of turning on and off appliances, lights and other devices. This knowledge then allows users to make informed decisions on what they are spending their energy Dollars on and allows them to reduce energy wastage.

Now as a featured device partner with Google PowerMeter, the Envi can send the energy information online to Google PowerMeter, a free online service from Google. Users can now monitor their electricity usage anywhere and anytime.

“Europe is far ahead of the US when it comes to deployment of this type of technology,” says Leoni Pearl, President of PowerSave, ”we believe that when US households learn of the benefit that home energy monitors provide, that adoption will grow rapidly”. Google PowerMeter will play a great part in fostering this growing awareness. “Being able to view your homes energy consumption from work or on your mobile device users will gain an unprecedented level of control over their energy usage”.

Current Cost estimates that their customers have already saved close to 400,000 tons of CO2 through monitoring their electricity use. One Australian restaurant recently learned that something as easy as turning off their coffee pots each night would save them $3,000 dollars per year.

The Envi is manufactured by Current Cost, Ltd based in the UK. With over 1 million units deployed, it is the leading manufacturer worldwide of energy monitors. PowerSave, Inc. is the master distributor for the Envi in North America.

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Source : PRWeb

By Kirsten Korosec | May 25, 2010

Google PowerMeter, the free home-energy monitoring software, may not have started out as a disruptive technology. But the Google (GOOG) product is doing a damned good job of making the smart meter about as necessary as another American Pie sequel. Google PowerMeter announced Monday it was partnering with Current Cost, a U.K. company that sells real-time energy-usage monitors. Current Cost will now offer devices that are compatible with Google PowerMeter, and will upgrade existing customers so they can use the Google software.

These monitors are interesting because, unlike a smart meter, they allow customers to watch their energy consumption in real time. The Current Cost monitor plugs into a wall outlet and displays up-to-the-minute energy use on an attached screen. The monitor gets its data directly from a customer’s utility meter via a sensor and transmitter connected to the meter itself.

PowerMeter essentially takes this real-time information a step further. A Current Cost user can connect the device to a computer, where energy consumption is tracked via PowerMeter and the data is sent to a customer’s iGoogle homepage. Once connected to Google PowerMeter, users can access the information  online. PowerMeter users can look for trends or spikes in energy use during certain times of the day or track down a particular energy sucker in the house. Smart meters, on the other hand, are controlled by the utility and the information oftentimes reaches the customers after 24 hours or more.

It’s useful for customers whose homes don’t have a smart meter. Or for anyone with a energy device who wants to bypass the smart meter altogether, which has become an appealing proposition for some unhappy utility customers. Earlier this month, utility PG&E acknowledged that as many as 23,000 customers that have its new smart meters received inaccurate bills. Similar problems have been reported in Texas. Disgruntled utility customers may end up using the energy devices and PowerMeter as a check against their bills, for example.

The Current Cost partnership wouldn’t be significant if Google.org, the philanthropic arm that started Google PowerMeter, hadn’t already signed on with device makers AlertMe and Energy Inc. Now that Google.org has opened up its PowerMeter API, companies like Current Cost will be able to access code used in the software and build home-energy devices that work with Google’s product. By opening up their code, Google.org is encouraging device makers to use it. Which will likely turn into partnerships down the road.

It’s not that Google.org is trying to kill the smart meter.  PowerMeter was originally designed to take information from a smart meter installed in your home. And it signed on with a number of utility partners including San Diego Gas & Electric, TXU Energy, Wisconsin Public Service and German utility YelloStorm. But PowerMeter would become irrelevant and overcome by its competitors rather quickly if it relied solely on partnerships with utilities since it would only be available to those customers.

Now, the software tool can reach millions more customers through partnerships with energy device makers. These partnerships start to solve the accessibility problem with Google PowerMeter. It also makes it far more competitive with Microsoft’s (MFST) Hohm as well as a host of others in the increasingly crowded home-energy monitoring market.

Photo of light switch from Flickr user SeveStJude, CC 2.0

Google PowerMeter logo from Google.org

by Nino Marchetti, May 24th, 2010 Been curious about the Google PowerMeter initiative which lets you monitor your home energy consumption online? Up till now it has been pretty limited in usage to customers with a few scattered utilities, but now that is changing via a new partnership between Google and home energy monitor company Current Cost. This innovative expansion, part of Google’s opening up of the software behind PowerMeter to developers, kicked off today.

image via Current Cost

Google said that Current Cost, which reportedly has sold over 1 million in-home energy monitoring devices, will now make available units that are Google PowerMeter compatible. Units which are PowerMeter friendly will first be available in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Current Cost will also make available to existing customers an upgrade that makes their devices work with PowerMeter as well.

 Current Cost’s devices come in a kit form consisting of “a transmitting unit and two current clamps that transmit your electricity consumption” to a display. Energy usage is shown in KWH alongside estimations of daily, weekly and monthly electricity cost based on current usage. It can store this data for up to seven years and monitor up to nine appliances with additional transmitters. Two options exist for connecting this data to Google PowerMeter, including a USB/software combo or directly over the Internet from a router.