How Google PowerMeter got it wrong and how to fill the gap

[Update: PowerMeter is dead as a doornail! You gotta be out by September 16 of this year. 90 day eviction!] A few days ago Google deprecated a bunch of their API's, including Google PowerMeter.  The reaction from the community has been a bit raw, with notables like Limor Fried of Adafruit saying she had predicted almost a year ago that PowerMeter wasn't "a serious effort at Google" and that "Google didn't really do much in this space".  This isn't so surprising to us though, as they've never been able to deliver on a few key drivers:

• Direct consumer access to real-time data
• Secure access to data by third-party service providers / application developers

The lack of a true real-time open data platform is the core of why the service had to fail. "Open data" is about ownership, portability, and empowering users.  PowerMeter dealt with none of those things and instead was an end-point in the system, a silo, with far too little value for all parties involved (utilities, consumers, service/app developers).  "Open data" in this form is useless, while still providing a means of invading the data for any number of Google's own purposes.  Not what we're looking for.

  Jesse Berst from SmartGridNews adds:

Naïve in the ways of the utility industry, Google thought it merely needed to show up at the doorstep and grateful utilities would crowd around to happily hand Google their customer consumption data. When most utilities (wisely) said no thank you to Google's heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition, the firm then sailed off to Washington D.C. It spent more than a year lobbying the hill to force utilities to hand over their data. With the failure of that effort, the Googliputians largely lost interest in PowerMeter. It now is in the software equivalent of a vegetative coma.

We think the right approach for not only the energy space, but any market related to the Internet of Things, is to put the user in control, at the center.  With direct control over their data and how they use it, and the ability to share that data securely with both peers and service providers, you create an environment where both activity and engagement flourishes.  When a business model is applied to this system in which the utilities and service providers/developers also benefit, innovation driven by market forces will explode.

This is how we are already working with governments and cities in several pilot deployments we are doing with Cisco, and it's how we will potentially work with energy utilities as well.  As data is being gathered and applied to business needs such as billing and analytics, Pachube is the link to the citizen/consumer, giving them a way to manage their data and, soon, connect it with third-party apps and services.

As far as Google PowerMeter, we'll carry the torch from here!  We already have almost 10,000 users who are managing their personal energy data on our platform. Users will find graphing tools, dashboards, mobile apps, and embeddable widgets in our app repository that can be used with any real-time data, including energy data. Moving forward, we are working with application developers and hardware companies who are building energy-management products to connect into Pachube and are always on the lookout for more.  Additionally, disaffected PowerMeter users can bring their historical data into Pachube by using our import app.  To get data pushing directly to Pachube in real-time moving forward, we will need to work with the data provider or hardware manufacturer.  Users should let them know they want to get their data into Pachube and then have them contact us at biz@pachube.com.  We'll take it from there. Also, we're happy to extend free Premium accounts to users who bring their data over from PowerMeter.