Google is collaborating with Energy Inc. as its first device partner for the Google PowerMeter. For those who do not know, Google PowerMeter is a freeware developed and released to the public in February 2009 to help consumers monitor their electricity/energy consumption in real time via utility smart meters or in-home energy management devices.

This device, aptly named TED (The Energy Detective) 5000, collects electricity use data and sends it to the Google PowerMeter software. According to Google, anyone with the TED 5000 can now retrieve this data via the Internet using PowerMeter anytime, anywhere. Available in US for USD$200, this is certainly a useful tool to help consumers understand their electricity usage to save energy and money in the long run. With increasing electricity/energy costs, we believe the savings in energy usage will more than justify the purchase of this monitoring device. Hope to see this in Singapore soon!

“Today, we're very excited to announce we have secured our first official device partner. (That means having a smart meter installed by your utility is no longer a prerequisite for using Google PowerMeter!) For the last several months, a few hundred Google employees have been testing a number of in-home electricity monitoring devices. Those of us lucky enough to have one of these devices installed in our homes experienced first-hand how access to high-resolution energy use information drives meaningful behavior change (PDF). So we set out to make that data easier for everyone to access and understand by sending the collected data to our Google PowerMeter software.”

News via [Google]