Attention, startups: The home-energy management market just got a lot less competitive — for anyone who can figure out a viable business, at least.

Microsoft today announced that it will be suspending its Hohm energy monitoring service, a free online tool that helps people monitor and manage their home power consumption, saying that it hasn’t seen as much interest as it had hoped.

The move follows a similar announcement last week from Google about its PowerMeter project.

“The feedback from customers and partners has remained encouraging throughout Microsoft Hohm’s beta period,” the Microsoft Hohm team said in a post today. “However, due to the slow overall market adoption of the service, we are instead focusing our efforts on products and solutions more capable of supporting long-standing growth within this evolving market.”

The shutdown of Microsoft Hohm won’t be effective for another year, on May 31, 2012. The announcement isn’t a huge surprise. Microsoft had already said it was shifting the focus of the Hohm project away from homes to electric cars.

See this Microsoft FAQ for more on the shutdown.

(Via ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley)

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