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IBM's Five Predictions for the Future
StonyandCher writes "IBM has released its second annual set of 'Next Five in Five' predictions. The company's crystal ball also revealed that the long-simmering trend toward "smart energy" devices will proliferate wildly. "Dishwashers, air conditioners, house lights, and more will be connected directly to a 'smart' electric grid, making it possible to turn them on and off using your cell phone or any Web browser," a company statement asserts."
Yay for the editors linking to a blog ...that links to IBM's actual site.
IBM Reveals Five Innovations that Will Change Our Lives Over the Next Five Years
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22683.wss
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ideasfromibm/us/five_in_five/010807/index.shtml
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Journalistic garbage is what it is.
This is not about controlling your dishwasher through a web browser. That's fucking stupid and everyone in the industry knows it's stupid. Unfortunately, things are dumbed down for the consumer to understand.
This is about automated energy management. Devices need to talk to each other and with the grid in order to be "smart". This allows energy suppliers and users to be able to manage / balance energy usage. But it's more than just energy usage - it's about devices that cooperate with each other. Your occupancy sensor works with the lighting and heating systems to keep people comfortable. They work with ambient light sensors and window blinds to keep the sun out when it is at a bad angle, or let let it in and power off / dim the overhead lights... You can come up with thousands of examples here...
Echelon in San Jose has been developing this technology for many years, as have others. It's secure and reliable. Hell - remote energy management has been desirable / SOP for at LEAST 15 years, where chain stores remote control heating / lighting from corporate headquarters. It's just that power-line network technology has gotten good and inexpensive enough to move into much smaller devices. No, this isn't X-10 crap, it uses 128 bit device ID's and is a full network protocol. I tossed all my X10 crap years ago as it was WAY too unreliable and devices were poor quality. Unfortunately, the good stuff hasn't really made it down to the consumer level yet.
Commercial/industrial/hospital installations are already commonly providing interfaces through the web browser. In a large system a remote interface can often avoid the time and expense of a trip to the site to turn on a system just because someone's having an off-hours meeting.
Although "powering down" an appliance doesn't have much utility on the face of it, it could be useful to be able to shut something down or turn it on from your browser when you're away. The common dumb example is to turn heating or cooling on an hour before you get home, so I guess maybe you could turn them off after you realize you're not going home yet.
More likely, you would be using the web interface because the system paged you or sent a text to your cell phone telling you that something went wrong. An e-mail woudn't be as useful, since it's less likely to get your attention in a timely fashion. If the temperature falls well below the setpoint, and you're on vacation, there might be a problem with your furnace or boiler. And it can be possible to set it up so you can do a little troubleshooting from the web, though more likely you'd call a neighbor or relative to check up on it.
Another situation that most people don't think of, but that does happen often enough to cause a lot of damage, is a wasing machine hose bursting and flodding the house. However, a better solution than monitoring that through the web is to shut the damn valves at the hose connection (you're supposed to do that every time you finish washing clothes, the hoses are prone to failure if left under pressure, but nobody, including me, does that.)
Still, there's a lot less call for this stuff in a single family home than in an industrial or commercial setting where a serviceman might be on call.
There are also electric models that sit between the washer and the outlet. When it senses a current draw from the washer, it opens the solenoids to allow the water to flow. If the washer is off, the solenoids snap shut. This is safer but of course much more expensive.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Connected together with a switch to turn them all off. Turn off the lights and TV in any room and look around at all the nice little glowing LEDs that are shining back at you. There's no f'n reason whatsoever for those things to still be consuming electricity, yet they run 24/7 whether they are "on" or not. Want to conserve energy? Fix that first and THEN deal with smart appliances.
I agree with the parent above
I work in the HVAC/Building Automation/Energy Management field and can tell you that the application of the future is Automated demand response.
One of our customers is now signed up on a program with SCE. On set days during the summer months when energy demand is expected to go higher than normal, we receive a signal over the Internet to a box with an integrated relay. Upon receiving this signal our web-based EMS system initiates a sequence for demand response by shutting off lighting circuits, as well as shifting cooling setpoints up by 3 degrees during a 6 hour period.
The whole idea is to reduce peak demand usage.
I don't see any of this reaching the residential consumer anytime soon.
In CA, check out the energy demand outlook for the day here:
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Also check out Tridium's website (developers of the Niagara framework)
http://www.tridium.com/
This is a great industry to be in, specially now with everyone going "Green" and energy prices going up.
However, you need to understand A/C, Electrical, and IT. Control systems have come a long way.