Electricity, or rather the way electricity is billed, baffles me. There seems to be little relationship between the total kilowatt hours billed and our actual usage and the little graphs on page four (why is my bill four pages long?) are less than useful. I would love to know exactly what happens to my power usage when the kids get home from school or we host a dinner party. I would very much like to do this from my phone whenever I feel like it.

Smart meters have been around for some time but have failed to catch on in the United States -- I've always figured they don't want us to know -- and while this may change with earmarked funding in the stimulus package, right now we are pretty much on our own. Smart meters are not prohibitively expensive but getting that data someplace where it can be turned into something useful has been a problem with various vendors trying different methods. Slowly the consensus is turning towards TCP/IP technology to consolidate the transmission of information throughout the grid.

Basically, this is the way the Internet works and if you have a broadband connection and someplace to put the data, you're good to go.

Enter the Borg Google. Partnered with TED, manufacturer of the TED 5000, Google is rolling out free PowerMeter software. This will allow the streaming of near real time energy usage data to Googles servers allowing it to be securely viewed on an Android or iPhone.

Not only can we yell at the kids to turn off lights from work but we (meaning they) will have huge datasets of very specific and identifiable information. Attic weed growers beware.