Microsoft today confirmed plans to roll out a new product under the "Hohm" brand name that surfaced in a trademark filing last week. Turns out the name is a reference to "ohm," the common unit of electrical measure. Hohm is a free online service designed to help people monitor and manage their home power consumption -- ultimately helping utilities get a better handle on energy demand.

Hohm will let people fill out a private profile of their homes, including such details as the geographic location, number of stories, windows, type of heating system and square footage. It will also let people automatically pull in data about their energy usage from participating utilities. In addition to letting people track their energy usage, the service will provide suggestions for saving energy.

Google announced a similar service called PowerMeter this year.

Seattle City Light is among the initial utilities partnering with Microsoft on the service.

Microsoft's service will initially generate revenue through advertisements, said Troy Batterberry, product unit manager for Microsoft's residential energy management business. But the bigger goal is to build a business by helping utilities demonstrate that they're meeting regulatory requirements for energy conservation. User data will be made anonymous before it's used for that purpose, he said.

"Long term, it will really be about demand-side management products and services that we sell back to utilities," he said.

The Web-based service will use advanced algorithms to make those suggestions, based on the characteristics of the home -- refining and improving those suggestions over time based on how effective they prove in managing energy usage.

The Redmond company announced plans for the service this morning in conjunction with a speech by Craig Mundie, the company's chief research and strategy officer, at the Edison Electric Institute in San Francisco. The company is now accepting signups on the Hohm site from people who want to be included in the beta when it rolls out in the coming days.

Microsoft is building the service on its Azure cloud computing platform.

[Credit to TechFlash reader Meks, who accurately predicted this last week based on the trademark filing.]