Google Incorporated has recently announced a new application called Google PowerMeter, a feature that aims at helping users with their electric bill by tracking their home electricity usage.

The app, which is a a widget on iGoogle, communicates with the 40 million smart meters all throughout the United States and afterwards shows consumers their home energy information on their computer screens, and all this in almost real time.

In a blog post, Ed Lu of Google's engineering team stated that the detailed information concerning personal energy use should be made available in an open standard, non-proprietary format, adding that users should get to decide who can see their data.

Moreover, Lu said that consumers should have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of services capable of helping them understand and benefit from the data.

For the time being, Google PowerMeter is still undergoing testing, but the company said that it planned to expand the app’s user-base and make it more widely available in the near future.

Lu asked federal and state governments, utilities, device manufacturers, and software engineers to join Google’s efforts, saying that consumers would be urged to use electricity more wisely by virtue of the fact that they would be provided access to their energy information.

This week-end, Google filed comments with the California Public Utility Commission urging it to update its smart grid policy so as to include principles enabling free, standardized and direct access to real-time electricity usage information.