Tweet-a-Watt got the ball rolling, but this project by the Energy Circle one-ups that clever hack to imbue followers of @EnergyCircleKW at Twitter with full-house consumption stats. (Since it’s based on a Kill-a-Watt, Tweet-a-Watt can only report on a single plug)

The setup involves a TED: The Energy Detective electricity monitoring device (that’s it on the right), a little time hacking Linux and some home networking smarts. After that, TED is ready to tweet your energy spikes. From the looks of it, getting this up and running in your home is child’s play for the geekily inclined (hire an electrician for the breaker box part if your uncomfortable poking around in there).

After installing TED, Energy Circle has observed a 16 percent drop in their energy bill. And the tweets (edited by a human in this case for added context/humor) are a neat way of keeping on an eye on energy-consuming habits.

[via Mother Nature Network]