Google PowerMeter and TED 5000 Bring Real-Time Monitoring Home. Smart Meter, Step Aside.

Google/TED Partnership takes real-time power monitoring to a new level.

In the field of energy measurement, which we deem the critical beginning of any effort to reduce energy use at home, Google's announcement that the TED 5000 will be compatible with PowerMeter is a game changer. 

Now, any purchaser of the new TED 5000 electricity monitor will have the ability to access Google's free PowerMeter software and benefit from the kind of real-time, accessible data we have been relying on for months to reduce our energy usage. (As many of you know, we rigged our TED 1000 to project our usage onto the site, and annotated the peaks and dips on Twitter, and open-sourced the process). As of today, that technology is as easy as opening a box and hooking up your monitor.

We have been openly yearning for Google to take its powerful analytic tools and apply them to home energy power monitoring. That wish seemed to come true when Google announced PowerMeter, a home energy measuring tool that works with smart meters to provide data to homeowners. But Power Meter has so far been limited to a handful of Google employees, and its future seemed hopelessly linked to smart meters, which have appeared in smatterings across the country.

The Google/TED partnership is auspicious not just because it makes Power Meter available to those who do not have access to smart meters, speeding up adoption, but also because it eclipses the need for a smart meter in order to benefit from real-time monitoring. We have lamented utilities' seeming reluctance to make real-time data available to homeowners. In lieu of these smart-grid technologies, we have championed the TED 1,000 series electricity monitor as the best way to make real-time monitoring possible, but we have yearned for more. 

More is here. The TED 5000 series monitor has arrived, and Energy Circle will soon have it in stock. TED 5000 upgrades the 1000 version with a hand-held display unit and a Gateway component, and is fully functional with PC, Mac and Linux. Perhaps most significantly, TED interfaces with Google PowerMeter - making Power Meter's free software interface possible without a smart meter for the first time. That means better current and historical data presented in accessible charts and graphs.  In addition, TED 5,000 allows you to view your electricity usage from your laptop, mobile phone or iphone.

A key add-on for the TED 5,000 will allow consumers to monitor renewables. Sky is the limit, folks. Real-time, real-life monitoring is here. Let's put it to use.

Access Google PowerMeter. Pre-order the TED 5,000 from Energy Circle today, and get started.