From the New York Times on Tuesday, February 10, 2009:
If people knew how much electricity they are using every time they turn on the lights, fire up the oven or lower the thermostat on their air conditioner, they would make smarter decisions about their energy use, and presumably, conserve more.
That’s the idea behind a prototype service that Google unveiled Tuesday, which my colleague Matthew Wald and I wrote about in Tuesday’s paper. The service, which will be called Google PowerMeter, will allow users to measure their energy use in real time. It one of many new consumer products that would-be enabled by so-called “smart grid” technologies, and it is one of Google many new initiatives in the energy area.
Click here to read the whole article.
I have read that 6% to 10% of U.S. home energy usage is simply running there clothes dryers. What a simple and sustainable thing it would be to air dry all of our clothes using either a clothes drying rack or a clothes line.