http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-powermeter-api-introduced-for.html
Seems it would go well with Jean-Claude's post: How to read power and gas meters http://talk.jeelabs.net/topic/51
Google announces Powermeter API
(4 posts) (3 voices)-
Posted 03/03/2010 18:24:54
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I may have to eat my words one day, but I don't quite see the point of GPM - is it the fancy graphics? To me, the scale at which Google does things and knows things is starting to become a bit creepy...
Posted 03/03/2010 21:33:41 -
I guess I'll find out more when I actually get it working. If Google Analytics is any indication of their ability to visualize data (comparisons, historically.. etc) then I'm excited. But mainly because it's fast and free.
Posted 03/03/2010 22:31:34 -
Google says they are trying to make it easy for consumers to visualize their electricity usage in close to real time, and that would (in theory) be enough to get consumers to self-modify their behavior to reduce energy usage.
I am speculating that they also hope to do some analytics on the data and feed consumers helpful hints about their power, like "It looks like your hot water heater is inefficient - you should consider getting a new one" with google ads on the side for appliances and installation services.
In reality, many "smart meters" won't/can't report energy use in real time. I also believe utility companies will balk at giving the data away "for security reasons" (but in reality, they want to monitize the data).
I hope that we can co-opt Google's API and use Google's storage and graphing (rather than constantly rolling our own). Why not graph information from other sensors over time: temperature, water use, flushes, sun intensity, whatever.
Posted 10/03/2010 05:20:42