Imagine how hard it would be to
stick to a budget in a store with no prices. Well,
that's pretty much how we buy electricity today. Your
utility company sends you a bill at the end of the month
with very few details. Most people don't know how much
electricity their appliances use, where in the house
they are wasting electricity, or how much the bill might
go up during different seasons. But in a world where
everyone had a detailed understanding of their home
energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save
energy and lower electricity bills. In fact,
studies show that access to home energy information
results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity
bills. It may not sound like much, but if half of
America's households cut their energy demand by 10
percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight
million cars off the road.
Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information
and make it universally accessible and useful," and we
believe consumers have a right to detailed information
about their
home electricity use. We're tackling the challenge
on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing
consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid
companies. We've been participating in the dialogue in
Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and
other parts of the world to advocate for investment in
the building of a "smart grid," to bring our 1950s-era
electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to
provide both consumers and utilities with real-time
energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced
energy meters called "smart meters." There are currently
about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with
plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.
But
deploying smart meters alone isn't enough. This needs to
be coupled with a strategy to provide customers with
easy access to energy information. That's why we believe
that open protocols and standards should serve as the
cornerstone of smart grid projects, to spur innovation,
drive competition, and bring more information to
consumers as the smart grid evolves. We believe that
detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to
you, and should be available in an open standard,
non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to
see your data, and you should be free to choose from a
wide range of services to help you understand it and
benefit from it. For more details on our policy
suggestions, check out the
comments we filed yesterday with the California
Public Utility Commission.
In addition to policy advocacy, we're building consumer
tools, too. Over the last several months, our engineers
have developed a software tool called
Google PowerMeter, which will show consumers their
home energy information almost in real time, right on
their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available
to the public since we're
testing it out with Googlers first. But we're
building partnerships with utilities and independent
device manufacturers to gradually roll this out in pilot
programs. Once we've had a chance to kick the tires,
we'll make the tool more widely available.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing
consumers with detailed energy information. And it will
take the combined efforts of federal and state
governments, utilities, device manufacturers, and
software engineers to empower consumers to use
electricity more wisely by giving them access to energy
information.
