There’s a good piece over at Portfolio.com about Google’s green energy initiatives and collaboration with GE.  Google’s goal is to make every home energy efficient so that appliances know when to power up and down while heating and cooling respond automatically to the prices in energy.  Before that can happen big time upgrades must happen in the transmission lines which are horribly outdated and inefficient.

Google aims to do with energy what it’s done for advertising on the web.  Creating a system where pricing is based on supply and demand in real time, potentially allowing individuals to sell back energy stored in electric car batteries.  Essentially, they want to advance the smart grid on a massive scale.  For now the company hopes to just get the word out about energy efficiency and is implementing steps to dramatically reduce the amount of energy it uses in its data centers.