Google begins infiltration of energy market: For good or for awesome?

I’m surprised that in Tech Crunch’s article on the Google’s PowerMeter Project, they don’t speculate that this is a huge first step for Google to enter the energy market.  As smart power meters are being installed that monitor home power usage, techcrunch reports that Google has plans to create a “software tool called Google PowerMeter (presumably a web app) that puts this information at people’s finger tips.”

Although the announcement comes from Google’s philanthropic website, how can techcrunch resist speculating on Google’s entry into the power market.  In the next ten years, a significant percentage of power will be crowdsourced by people who install solar panels and other green energy devices.  This is more than a trend of people being “off the grid.”  Solar panels already pay for themselves after just 3 years.  As the technology steadily improves, and as stimulus money gets channeled into the green power industry, soon a significant percentage of power will come from these “off the grid” users; they will become an “independent” power company.  Small “startup” power farms will emerge.  This will be a completely new market and Google (as usual) is putting themselves in the position to be the manager of that market.  This is big stuff.