JEA (Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.) and the Glasgow Electric Plant Board in Kentucky are among the first smart-metered utilities tapped by Google for its PowerMeter project. The utilities will now integrate the information coming from the Smart Grids with Google to create a “gadget” with real-time readings of residential customers' energy usage through the course of the day.

Both JEA and Glasgow made the initial contact with Google because of their need for software to go with their own planned projects. Given their proactive attitude toward this technology, the utilities were offered participation in the PowerMeter project.

The utilities each chose around 25 customers to take part in the Power-Meter pilot program. These customers are given daily and hourly graphs of their usage, with comparisons to like-sized homes in the program.

“Studies have shown that the more individuals understand about how their behavior affects their energy and water consumption, the more empowered they are to make changes that will not only benefit their pocketbook, but that will benefit the community and the environment as well,” said Jim Dickenson, CEO and managing director of JEA.

“What we hope to gain is a relationship with Google, not just with Glasgow and Google but with the electric utility industry and Google, so that we can use their national resource of software capability to apply software and IP-based metering standards to improve the load factor and diminish the need for new generation,” said William Ray, CEO of the Glasgow Electric Plant Board.

“The need to improve load factor is consistent no matter whether a utility has 100 meters or 100 million,” Ray said.

Other partner utilities include Reliance Energy (India), San Diego Gas & Electric, Toronto Hydro-Electric System Ltd., TXU Energy (Texas), White River Valley Electric Cooperative (Missouri) and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. Smart Grid manufacturer Itron was announced as a project partner.