TED 5000 and Google PowerMeter on iGoogle is Live

Google PowerMeter iGoogle

I was thrilled when I learned Google PowerMeter and TED 5000 were going to be teaming up to bring me my energy consumption on my iGoogle page. I have had the TED 5000 installed since July and I just installed my TED 5000 updates and I have the power meter running on my iGoogle! Unfortunately, unless you have a TED 5000 or have a utility that has teamed up with Google PowerMeter then you can't get this nifty widget. So buy the TED 5000 or bug your utility!

After you have the updates installed for the TED you can log in to Footprints (the TED 5000 software) and go to "Edit --> Activate Google PowerMeter". You will have to have a Google account to access the iGoogle page. If you are already logged into your Google account then it should be smooth sailing from this point.

Activate Google Power Meter

The widget appeared very quickly, but it did take a few minutes for the initial data to start appearing. Be calm while the data uploads! It looks like the update rate of the data is every 10 mins.

My favorite feature is using my iPhone to pull up iGoogle and view the Google PowerMeter widget! I currently have the TED 5000 iPhone app but I have to be in my home and connected to the network. With the iGoogle PowerMeter Widget, I can access the TED 5000 data from anywhere I have a phone connection!

Google Power meter TED 5000 data on iPhone

You can also enlarge the PowerMeter widget so you can get a better view of the data. I like the "Compared to other" bar at the bottom so you can see how your home is performing. It looks bare on mine right now only because it has just been installed.

**Update - 10/28/09 - I removed the old data picture from when I initially had it up and running and I've updated the picture now that I have more data. Below is the expanded data you get when you click on the PowerMeter in iGoogle. Google recently added an "expected usage" bar at the very bottom. The spikes that occur are at night when we get home from work and in the morning when we're getting ready.

Google PowerMeter Expanded

I'm signing off now to go experiment with the Google PowerMeter and let it gather some more data. I'll update this post with more information soon...

I've had a few weeks to play with this, and I am pretty excited. If you save your iGoogle page as a bookmark on your iPhone you can pull it up and show people the PowerMeter and show them your home's energy usage in real time. I use it to demonstrate the power of home energy monitoring.

Tags:

Google power meter iGoogle

Google power meter iphone

PowerMeter

ted 5000

TED 5000 iphone app

Comments

Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/09/2009 - 13:56

There are two displays to toggle between, however, neither can read negative numbers. My solar production reads 0. The new Footprints software handles the solar better but the graphing is still off. I also cannot get the live weather data on my dashboard. I cannot get the iGoogle Powermeter to show up on my mobile phone as I cannot access the mobile settings editing from my computer. All in all, I am pretty disappointed in the Powermeter and Footprints software. I am confident the issues with net metering will be corrected eventually as they receive more input from users. I think Energy Inc should have done more beta testing with net metering users prior to releasing the system.

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/26/2009 - 06:21

wmwinn, I wouldnt worry too much. See the comment right above yours that was posted by the support group at TED 5000. They are releasing an updated Solar packing this week (a software update) that will hopefully solve a lot of the issues.

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/08/2009 - 18:22

Just finished my install. Will be nice to check my solar production while at work. I wasn't expecting the software to be available until tomorrow afternoon so this was a nice surprise.

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