Method and system for the estimating the energy consumption of commercially available electrical devices

Abstract

Some embodiments of the present invention provide a system for estimating electrical power usage of commercially available devices utilizing a portable computing device equipped with a digital camera. In some embodiments, initial input to the system is accomplished by taking a digital photograph of an electrical device surface in order to capture text or other marks such as barcodes from which power usage of the device can be determined. In some embodiments OCR (optical character recognition) is used to retrieve text from the digital photograph. If successfully extracted from the captured text, power parameters such as voltage, amperes and watts are provided to the system user on the display of the mobile device. At this point an estimate of electrical device usage during a particular time period, such as a week, can be input into the system. The system will then calculate power usage over the specified time period for the electrical device and show the result on the system display.