On Monday, Ed Lu, a member of Google’s engineering team, announced the company was working on PowerMeter, a software tool which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer.

“Imagine how hard it would be to stick to a budget in a store with no prices. Well, that's pretty much how we buy electricity today,” Lu wrote on Google’s blog. “Most people don't know how much electricity their appliances use, where in the house they are wasting electricity or how much the bill might go up during different seasons.”

Lu pointed to a University of Oxford study highlighting the importance of feedback in making energy more visible and more amenable to understanding and control by consumers. The report found access to home energy information could result in savings between 5 percent and 15 percent on monthly electricity bills. “It may not sound like much, but if half of America's households cut their energy demand by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road,” he wrote. 

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