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Soon everything in your house will be smarter than a doorstop, to invert the old expression. Maybe the doorstop will get smarter, too.
Because consumer-goods companies want us to consume and electrical utilities (at least public ones) want us to conserve, new appliances are poised to come on the market that are smart, smart, smart.
The lowdown is that all the stuff in your home that pulls major electricity has no idea what time of day it is. That thermostat on the wall that lets you set times for wake, sleep, leave, return? It's not even sentient. If the batteries fail or you set it wrong, you could be boiling at midnight, freezing at noon.
A smart appliance enhances the tiny computers already found in most modern appliances by adding networking and some kind of interaction with activities, either via the device's existing controls, a special device (which could be a smart thermostat), or your computer.
The smart appliance requires a smart meter, which have already been installed by the millions worldwide, and which exchanges data about current usage and other behavior between itself and the utility. Tens of millions will be installed in the U.S. between the utility's own interests and government stimulus and other funding in the next few years.
A smart grid is a combination of a data network that spans and monitors electrical infrastructure, and that allows two-way communication with smart meters. The meters, in turn, communicate or pass along information to stuff in your house.
The reason for all this is that you and your appliances often choose the worst time to carry out routine activities, which you could avoid, defer, or reduce. That's because electrical grids are built to power peak use, which in warmer climates are weekday summer afternoons.
Different utilities define peak times differently based on their generation capacity, how much power they buy, incentive programs they run, and sometimes the time of year. Most agree that 9 or 10 pm to 7 am is off-peak; that around 5 pm in the summer can be the busiest time; and anything you can avoid doing from late morning to early evening is best avoided.
The peak problem is that if you have 10 power plants to handle peak usage, and use only 7 of them most of the time, you've got a lot of capital to keep in check just for parts of a day. With the increase in cost of building new plants, the desire to retire old plants (the ones that pollute more but are fired up only at peak times), and intents or mandates to reduce greenhouse gases, "shaving" peak use is on top of utilities' list.
The most notorious two appliances in your home for acting on their own are a refrigerator and an air conditioner. If you have a heat pump for either heating or cooling or both, that also falls into this category. These devices all have pumps and compressors, which use a lot of juice when employed.
Modern refrigerators have a automatic defrost cycle that can run multiple times per day, pushing up electrical use significantly during those times. Because refrigerators are too stupid to know what time of day it is, an arbitrary but large number are likely defrosting themselves during peak periods when the utility pays more for power on the open market or has to fire up its less-used plants.
Air conditioners are more obvious, because they're in use when it's hot out, and peak periods are peak periods because air conditioners are in heavy use. You've probably heard about pilot projects for years in which a special thermostat is installed in a house, and a utility customer can let the utility remotely raise the temperature to which the AC is chilling the house or apartment to reduce load during peak times. Customers typically get some kind of kickback: a metered reduction or a credit.
These thermostat options haven't taken off yet because the smart grid wasn't in place; piecemeal deployment only provides some information on how people behave with incentives and information.
For appliances that are run on demand, like electric, microwave, or toaster ovens, clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers, and, I don't know, bread makers, you might have more latitude than you want to admit about when they're used, and the hardware can be smart enough to help.
A smart clothes dryer that was monitoring electrical price and load could be set to switch to a half-power mode in which it took twice as long but the same net energy to dry clothes. Or you might be able to set it to pause up to an hour or two before starting if that reduced power usage.
For other kinds of appliances, the incentive is carrot and stick. If you opt into what nearly all utilities currently run as voluntary programs for time-of-day pricing, you might avoid using the oven on a hot day not just for the sense of it, but because the charge on that day could be three times per kilowatt hour as a few hours later. Those muffins can wait!
The ultimate benefit is supposed to full of wins, without much inconvenience, because the smart appliance is supposed to manage conservation or peak usage for you, according to your desires or the program you opt into.
Utilities don't have to build new plants, can mothball old ones, and can keep rates growing slowly. Let's be real: we know power rates rarely go down; it does happen, especially in areas that generator a surplus of power. But the benefit of growing rates slowly by avoiding construction is a win.
That's the macro level. For you, personally, engaging in one of these programs and replacing old appliances gradually with new smart ones could mean a real drop in your bills. Even for those folks who have swapped out Edison bulbs for fluorescents, and unplug wall warts (AC chargers for phones and such) when not in use, dumb appliances still make dumb choices. It's possible to shave 10 to 30 percent off an electrical bill by participating in time-of-day pricing; the savings are larger in areas where AC use is common.
Now, of course, "white goods" (appliance) makers want to sell you new stuff, and how better to sell it than to label it green, energy saving, and save-on-your-bill saving? But a lot of that will be true; the time for payoff will be the real question.
I know that I've talked very little about conservation, and that's because many appliances have already been re-engineered to use less power; those kinds of appliances will be the same ones that get smarts, to couple good Energy Star usage ratings with peak shaving for the best combination hit.
For managing all this, there are already plenty of companies interested in collecting all the various data, packaging it neatly to help with telling you what you're spending, and what different appliances are up to. This includes Google, naturally, because we want them to know when we dry our clothes.
What smart appliances may bring into the home is a transition from 19th century power to 21st century knowledge. And knowledge brings power.
Because consumer-goods companies want us to consume and electrical utilities (at least public ones) want us to conserve, new appliances are poised to come on the market that are smart, smart, smart.
The lowdown is that all the stuff in your home that pulls major electricity has no idea what time of day it is. That thermostat on the wall that lets you set times for wake, sleep, leave, return? It's not even sentient. If the batteries fail or you set it wrong, you could be boiling at midnight, freezing at noon.
A smart appliance enhances the tiny computers already found in most modern appliances by adding networking and some kind of interaction with activities, either via the device's existing controls, a special device (which could be a smart thermostat), or your computer.
The smart appliance requires a smart meter, which have already been installed by the millions worldwide, and which exchanges data about current usage and other behavior between itself and the utility. Tens of millions will be installed in the U.S. between the utility's own interests and government stimulus and other funding in the next few years.
A smart grid is a combination of a data network that spans and monitors electrical infrastructure, and that allows two-way communication with smart meters. The meters, in turn, communicate or pass along information to stuff in your house.
The reason for all this is that you and your appliances often choose the worst time to carry out routine activities, which you could avoid, defer, or reduce. That's because electrical grids are built to power peak use, which in warmer climates are weekday summer afternoons.
Different utilities define peak times differently based on their generation capacity, how much power they buy, incentive programs they run, and sometimes the time of year. Most agree that 9 or 10 pm to 7 am is off-peak; that around 5 pm in the summer can be the busiest time; and anything you can avoid doing from late morning to early evening is best avoided.
The peak problem is that if you have 10 power plants to handle peak usage, and use only 7 of them most of the time, you've got a lot of capital to keep in check just for parts of a day. With the increase in cost of building new plants, the desire to retire old plants (the ones that pollute more but are fired up only at peak times), and intents or mandates to reduce greenhouse gases, "shaving" peak use is on top of utilities' list.
The most notorious two appliances in your home for acting on their own are a refrigerator and an air conditioner. If you have a heat pump for either heating or cooling or both, that also falls into this category. These devices all have pumps and compressors, which use a lot of juice when employed.
Modern refrigerators have a automatic defrost cycle that can run multiple times per day, pushing up electrical use significantly during those times. Because refrigerators are too stupid to know what time of day it is, an arbitrary but large number are likely defrosting themselves during peak periods when the utility pays more for power on the open market or has to fire up its less-used plants.
Air conditioners are more obvious, because they're in use when it's hot out, and peak periods are peak periods because air conditioners are in heavy use. You've probably heard about pilot projects for years in which a special thermostat is installed in a house, and a utility customer can let the utility remotely raise the temperature to which the AC is chilling the house or apartment to reduce load during peak times. Customers typically get some kind of kickback: a metered reduction or a credit.
These thermostat options haven't taken off yet because the smart grid wasn't in place; piecemeal deployment only provides some information on how people behave with incentives and information.
For appliances that are run on demand, like electric, microwave, or toaster ovens, clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers, and, I don't know, bread makers, you might have more latitude than you want to admit about when they're used, and the hardware can be smart enough to help.
A smart clothes dryer that was monitoring electrical price and load could be set to switch to a half-power mode in which it took twice as long but the same net energy to dry clothes. Or you might be able to set it to pause up to an hour or two before starting if that reduced power usage.
For other kinds of appliances, the incentive is carrot and stick. If you opt into what nearly all utilities currently run as voluntary programs for time-of-day pricing, you might avoid using the oven on a hot day not just for the sense of it, but because the charge on that day could be three times per kilowatt hour as a few hours later. Those muffins can wait!
The ultimate benefit is supposed to full of wins, without much inconvenience, because the smart appliance is supposed to manage conservation or peak usage for you, according to your desires or the program you opt into.
Utilities don't have to build new plants, can mothball old ones, and can keep rates growing slowly. Let's be real: we know power rates rarely go down; it does happen, especially in areas that generator a surplus of power. But the benefit of growing rates slowly by avoiding construction is a win.
That's the macro level. For you, personally, engaging in one of these programs and replacing old appliances gradually with new smart ones could mean a real drop in your bills. Even for those folks who have swapped out Edison bulbs for fluorescents, and unplug wall warts (AC chargers for phones and such) when not in use, dumb appliances still make dumb choices. It's possible to shave 10 to 30 percent off an electrical bill by participating in time-of-day pricing; the savings are larger in areas where AC use is common.
Now, of course, "white goods" (appliance) makers want to sell you new stuff, and how better to sell it than to label it green, energy saving, and save-on-your-bill saving? But a lot of that will be true; the time for payoff will be the real question.
I know that I've talked very little about conservation, and that's because many appliances have already been re-engineered to use less power; those kinds of appliances will be the same ones that get smarts, to couple good Energy Star usage ratings with peak shaving for the best combination hit.
For managing all this, there are already plenty of companies interested in collecting all the various data, packaging it neatly to help with telling you what you're spending, and what different appliances are up to. This includes Google, naturally, because we want them to know when we dry our clothes.
What smart appliances may bring into the home is a transition from 19th century power to 21st century knowledge. And knowledge brings power.
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