An app called Wattson could prove to be a nifty tool for monitoring home energy use, assuming it makes it as far as the App Store.

Its developers, a team of three engineers and a designer from Toronto, call Wattson a “personal energy butler.” The application lets homeowners plug into their local utility wirelessly and monitor how much electricity they’re using.

Among the features are a graph tool that shows power consumption throughout the day, plus a tag function that lets users associate various activities with the power they draw.

“This information allows you to challenge yourself to lower your usage and gauge where you are,” the Wattson web page explains. “Wattson can even calculate how many solar modules you would require to offset your usage on a daily basis and can share your statistics on Facebook and Twitter.”

Don’t bother going to the App Store for a download, at least not yet. For the time being, Wattson isn’t available. But it is in the running for something called the Ontario Challenge, a $50,000 competition for software developers.

Asked via Twitter when Wattson might be made available, one of the developers, Atindra Ganeshen (@tinbar) said, “as soon as the challenge period is over, which shouldn’t be too long.”