The energy function method developed so far assumes that the active load is constant. However, most of the actual load is voltage dependent, which hinders the application of the energy analysis method to the actual power system. On the other hand, the fast development of measurement techniques, especially the wide area measurement systems (WAMS) applied widely in worldwide power system nowadays, presses for the on-line transient stability analysis tools based on the system measurements. The voltage-dependent load into the energy analysis of power system transient stability is discussed. The effect of the comprehensive load characteristics on the system energy is discussed and a WAMS-based energy indicator on the system stability status is proposed. The indicator is easy to be calculated and thus real-time in the operation centre is monitored. The proposed method does not rely on any specific load model, and various load characteristics on different buses can be considered. Simulations on two test systems verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.