Having detailed information about your energy usage at your fingertips allows you to make more informed decisions about where improvements can be made, such as fitting low-energy light bulbs, or replacing your fridge or freezer with one that has a better energy efficiency rating.
The iPhone's Settings area holds other information about your phone usage, including the amount of data you have sent and received.
Rather than keeping information about your Gmail usage separate from specifics on what you write about on Blogger, Google will pull all of those details together.
When you arrive at your destination, stop the app and it automatically analyzes and records information about your acceleration, braking speed, fuel usage, and route distance.
You can also include information about expected resource usage (for example, CPU usage).
In a basic version, they would get real-time information about their usage and could then turn off the tumble dryer or other energy-hungry appliances.
"We've always gotten information about customers' usage and always kept it confidential," he said, adding, "We're going to honor their privacy".
Last year, the industry was forced to agree to a "protocol" that requires them to publish impact statements with information about counter usage, regular customers and location of the nearest alternative bank, cash machine and Post Office.
Phorm points out that its system does not retain detailed information about web usage as it builds its user profiles in contrast to Google, which keeps records of users' search queries for up to two years.
This could cut power demand by 10-15% during peak hours, estimates Ahmad Faruqui of the Brattle Group, a consultancy more than twice the reduction likely to be achieved by just giving customers real-time information about their usage.
"We recognize that such analyses are difficult, but without an attempt do so, information about terrorists' usage and potential usage remains unknown, leaving vulnerabilities for terrorists to exploit," the report said in recommending a comprehensive, more analytical approach to identifying terrorist money.
