A while back I thought about ways to improve energy usage - and taking away a concept I've learned from my profession - is that you can't do a good job improving something if you don't know exactly what's wrong with it.
That lead me to the idea of installing web-cameras with image recognition that constantly viewed my Electric, Gas, and Water meters. Then I'd have a program running on a computer reading from the web cameras, and graphing the data in real-time.
Thus, I'd always have real-time access to my energy usages, and it'd be able to really easly tell how much a hot shower cost me in real dollar terms -- or whatever other household activity I was doing.
The idea then would be to make this preatty cheap to build and install. Then improve the software to the point where it quickly points out likely problems in a user's energy usage.
I think a lot of people would improve their energy usage if they had much more frequent data than they get from their monthly bills.
Fortunately, the electric company where I live has an online interface that will give you daily usage in kW.
Though its not as good as hourly data might be, daily trends are very helpful because I can remember on particular days what I was doing that might have used more or less and get a feel for how much certain activities are costing.
It might even make me think twice about running the dryer for a few extra minutes next time.
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Smart Meters should be available here in PA within a year or two and should provide the kind of metrics you are looking for. I know the province of Ontario has already rolled out Smart Meters while other states such as the green leader California have made plans to do the same.
For immediate use there is this product sold on a number of websites including Amazon called the Kill-A-Watt. I won't provide you statistics for overall usage but it allows you to see how many watts are used by individual appliances.
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