Patent ID: 8589816

Claim:
Consumer electronics (CE) device, comprising: at least one processor; at least one video display configured for being controlled by the processor; and at least one computer readable storage medium accessible to the processor and bearing instructions executable by the processor to cause the processor to present on the display a user interface (UI) including plural windows simultaneously with each other, at least some of which represent a respective room in a residence and each presenting a respective visual indication indicating a relative and/or absolute consumption of energy use in the respective room, the CE device enabling a user of the CE device to “drill down” into a room to discover what appliances in that room are consuming energy, wherein the indicator is a fillable bar that is filled according to energy use, with a lower fill indicating lower energy use and a higher fill indicating higher energy use, the bar being fillable in that a length of the bar is constant and an area of fill of the bar is variable wherein the instructions when executed by the processor cause the processor to cause an alpha-numeric message to be presented in each window indicating whether energy use is low, moderate, or high.