Powering Google’s PowerMeter: testing TED 5000 and AlertMe Energy

There are plenty of ways to be green these days, but without some sort of feedback it’s hard to know just what shade you are. Enter Google’s PowerMeter, a service that tells you how much current you’re responsible for consuming. Why, it even shades its bar graphs in green, getting more pale the greedier you become. Google has partnerships with some utility companies in the US, Canada, and India, meaning a select few of you can do this sort of tracking by default. The rest of us were left out — until now. Two devices on the market let you track your usage in PowerMeter regardless of just how backwards your utility company is: The Energy Detective’s TED 5000 and the AlertMe Energy. We’ve been experimenting with these two for about a month now, finding that they serve the same purpose in very different ways and at very different costs. Click on through to see which one can best help you get greener.

Continue reading Powering Google’s PowerMeter: testing TED 5000 and AlertMe Energy

Powering Google’s PowerMeter: testing TED 5000 and AlertMe Energy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

This post is tagged: alertme, alertme energy, AlertmeEnergy, Feature, Featured, features, google, google powermeter, GooglePowermeter, hands-on, powermeter, review, smartplug, ted 5000, Ted5000, the energy detective, TheEnergyDetective, zigbee