NPR’s 10 part series on energy continued today with Building Lines Creates a Web of Problems and Smart Meters Save Big Bucks.  The Smart Meters are one of the areas that the Eneregy Utilization Center will examine because it is starting to pull together the technican side and the consumer side of the Electricity Use, Management, and Conversation.   Smart Meters help consumers track their electricity usage.

One recent afternoon, Tom Stathos from PPL (power company) is looking over Yeakel’s shoulder as she clicks through the site. He notices that Yeakel’s electricity use surges upward around 8 p.m. and asks her to explain what happens in her house at that time.  “My husband comes home,” she says. He turns on the television and lights, leaves doors open and starts cooking. “We’re always behind him turning everything off,” Yeakel says with a giggle, adding that even her 4-year-old twins pitch in.

I want to know when there are power spikes.  Or that what I am doing to save energy is actually working.  My power company has installed the smart meter, but so far no access to any website and I haven’t heard of plans whey they will.  Google has come up with thier own software, but it, of course, is in beta.  Either way, through my power company or Google, I want to know.  And as the old Schoolhouse Rock used to say, “Knowledge is power!”