To measure is to know. To know is to understand. To understand is to anticipate change. To register the magnitude of that change, we measure.. to know... to understand... to make change... Changing patterns of home energy use is linear and also circular. (Hence... Energy Circle). Google has just taken a step to make the whole process...smarter. While aspects of this plan are audacious, at its heart, Google's PowerMeter enterprise is common sense. After all, we know that recognizing how and why our homes consume energy is the crucial first step to reducing usage.
It is this premise that motivated a far less technologically dazzling - but no less community spirited - program to take root. Efficiency Maine, a program of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, recently gave card-carrying Mainers a serious boost in borrowing power. Library users in Maine can now flash their cards and take home a Kill-A-Watt EZ electricity monitor. The program is intended to raise awareness of energy vampires, like toasters, fans and coffee makers, and encourage Mainers to think twice about how appliances behave when they are plugged in and running, and also when they are off.
This is a fine step, and for those many millions of us who live far from the nearest smart grid, it's a reasonable beginning. Most of us living in Maine - and elsewhere - receive a utility bill that reads like an encrypted Sudoku puzzle. It means nothing to us. Our meters spin on the outside of our houses providing data so rudimentary and inaccessible that a Central Maine Power Company employee has to drive (oil, gas, pollution) to our houses to read it. Kill-A-Watt electricity monitors get us part of the way there, and when SmartGrids and PowerMeters get to us, we will be powerfully informed. In the meantime, we will need to take matters into our own hands, using whole house monitors such as the Blue Line Powercost Monitor and TED, The Energy Detective, so that we can measure, know, understand, and change our energy usage.
Go, Google Go. We are with you. We can't wait for PowerMeters to reach us. Really. We can't wait.
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