Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, is offering a new way to provide home energy-saving tips through its PowerMeter, a web tool that lets you monitor your home’s energy use from anywhere you can access the Internet.

This is just one planned effort by Google to measure up against Microsoft’s Hohm energy application, which can gather and display a home’s energy data and gives users a questionnaire in order to help make a home more energy efficient. Google is also developing a solution to gather energy usage information from gas and water meters.

Google’s PowerMeter application evaluates the size of your home and crunch some of your energy use data, both current and historical. With this information, the new feature recommends several ways for you to save energy at home throughout the day. PowerMeter will give you a badge for each energy efficiency recommendation you adopt, and once you’ve made all of those improvements, the PowerMeter will reassess your home and make new recommendations. In other words, the application evolves as your home becomes more energy efficient.

Google has already gone a step further and inked deals with several utility companies that use smart meters in their service areas. Under the arrangement, the smart meters flow energy information into the PowerMeter. This gives customers a breakdown of how much energy individual appliances use, allowing people to compare their own energy use to that of their neighbor’s.

How is this relevant to solar energy? Simply put, if you reduce the amount of electricity you buy from the utility, you’re able to meet a larger portion of your power needs with a solar electric system.

Powermeter’s motto, meanwhile, speaks for itself: “Save energy. Save money. Make a difference.” This is music to our ears.