Consumers may some day get a detailed look at their energy consumption using a tool being developed by Google.org.  The tool, which is being tested with some Google employees, would graph electricity and gas use through Google's iGoogle home pages. Users would have to add a PowerMeter widget to their page to get access to the chart, which shows spikes in energy consumption over the day.

IBM, General Electric, Acorn Energy and a bevy of others are working on smart grid technology. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy and states like California are also pushing smart grids.

Google’s plan: Take the information from these smart meters and put it in a dashboard so consumers can see where the power is going. Enter the Google PowerMeter, which will show consumers their home energy information. Sounds handy–once it gets out of testing. Moreover Google hopes that the PowerMeter will contribute to 5 – 15% in overall energy savings. 

Ed Lu, a member of Google's engineering team, said that the company has been campaigning to force electricity suppliers to provide consumers with more detailed information about their home electricity use. He wrote on Google's blog: "In a world where everyone had a detailed understanding of their home energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills. It may not sound like much, but if half of America's households cut their energy demand by 10 per cent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road."

Google said it is currently testing its PowerMeter in-house and intends to make it widely available once partnerships with utilities and device manufacturers have been formed.