Google Inc. (Google) has developed a new free web service, PowerMeter technology that provides home energy information and enables home owners to reduce electrical energy consumption. With this PowerMeter, the consumers can track energy usage in their house or business as it is consumed. The company expects to introduce this service in the next few months and it has not yet aligned the hardware manufacturers.

“We can’t build this product all by ourselves,” said Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm. “We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions.”

Smart grid include many approaches that involve more communication between utility operators and components of the grid, including transformers, power lines, customer meters and even home appliances like dishwashers.

“They’ve been putting a chip in your dishwasher for a long time that would allow you to run it any time you want,” said Rick Sergel, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

For example, if the utility can communicate to the dishwasher, it tells the machine to operate at 2 a.m. and not 2 p.m., or it may also tell the homeowner about the money saved by running the dishwasher at a different hour. This technology will also be useful for plug-in hybrid cars, doubling the electric demand of a small household. A smart grid will identify the car wherever it was plugged in, similar to a cellphone network identifies a mobile phone when it is turned on.

“It provides an opportunity to create dancing partners that will help the system balance itself,” Sergel said.

The grid can bill the owner of the car for recharging the battery no matter where the car was plugged in. The rate can be charged by the smart meter based on the time of day or night. If the car were left plugged in, the grid can decide when to charge it at the lowest rate.

House-Senate conference committee has allocated $4.4 billion of the stimulus bill for smart technologies, including four million of smart meters .

“You can hire a lot of people to install smart meters,” said James Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.