Oct

Google teams with Alertme, British Gas to give consumers control

Google is moving their smart grid initiative influence all over the world– they’re pushing some big buttons, and this is going to bring about big changes in the consumer energy consumption arena. On the business side, it is much more typical to see large energy utilities move towards smart grid by slowly deploying intelligent metering infrastructure throughout their territories, while expecting the consumers to tag along eventually, after the manual meter swaps occur and the infrastructure is ready to send and receive customer information. Google is going straight to the consumer with these initiatives (along with whichever companies they’re partnering with, TED in the US and Alertme in Britain), making their success inevitable, if only in light of the fact that they have the power (haha, punny) to HIT the CONSUMER first, even if Joe Blow’s utility company is in the process of planning out the two year long architecture and deployment processes necessary to make Blow’s house a smart home.