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Why Intel Wants To Network Your Clothes Dryer
An anonymous reader writes "Intel has shown off a working prototype of a small box that, among other things, can monitor your clothes dryer to see how much it's contributing to your power bill. The Intelligent Home Energy Management proof-of-concept device is a small box with an 11.56-inch OLED touchscreen that is designed to act as an electronic dashboard for monitoring energy use in the home. By equipping devices like home entertainment systems and clothes dryers with wireless networked power adapters, the system can actually report back the power draw for a particular power point. Leave the house, and it can make sure power-draining devices like that plasma TV are turned off. It is unlikely the device will enter production (there are apparently only four in existence), however this story about the box shows something we can expect to see in the home of tomorrow. Ultimately, it's not only about saving money, but also reducing load on the electricity grid by removing needless power use."
Dryers actually do eat socks. Some years ago, mine died. Thinking "hey, there might be some salvageable parts" (motor, timer), I took it apart. Inside the case, outside the drum, there was a literal double handful of single socks, and about $4 in change and bills.
Here in the UK we're seeing a lot of devices that you place around the incoming electricity feed (via a loop you put around the cable) that has a wireless transmitter to a LCD display of current overall power usage (and some historical stats). They're quite cool, some can be connected to your PC, like the CurrentCost Envi. The idea is you can see how much power those hungry devices use as you see the meter spike up when you turn them on.
The government has set a policy for monitoring meters, and the electricity companies (and Sky TV for some reason) are offering subsidised units (I got mine cheap off ebay from someone who had one of these).
You can get these things in the US and Australia/NZ too, and even Google is getting involved as these things will upload to Google Powermeter.
So, adding a wireless usage transmitter to every plug sounds expensive (but cool) but it wouldn't provide that much more information than you can get currently. However, the CurrentCost devices talk to each other (and you can set up multiple meters) so if their comms protocol was a standard (it might be, they advertise it as C2), then additional transmitters could fit into an existing power-usage network without fuss.
The "vampire power" thing is a bit overrated, actually.
No, it isn't.
Switching power supplies, like good quality cell phone chargers and laptop power supplies generally use almost no power when they're not under load. At least, the ones in my house don't. I know this because...
I installed a Brultech ECM-1240 on my house's breaker panel. It has current taps around the main feed, and several other house circuits, like the kitchen outlets, furnace (which also works as my a/c blower in the summer), etc. It sends the data over IP to a low power PC (6W, thanks to a low power CPU and SSD) which stores it in a database and generates graphs you can view in a web browser (unfortunately using a Flash applet).
The software was, to put it mildly, complicated to set up. Seriously. It's not quite a finished product, and it has a few gotchas that prevent it from working until you figure out the mindset of the person who hacked it together. Once it's working, it's pretty neat though.
So, what did I find?
The powered subwoofer in the living room uses 10W when it's in "Standby" mode. It's now wired to a relay connected to my receiver's switched outlet, so it's never on unless the receiver is also on.
The PS3 wakes itself up at all times of the night - oh, you think it's off, but it's nowhere near off. It'll wake up for whatever nefarious reason whenever the hell it wants to and then it stays on until you turn it off again - all the time using about 150W continuously. I wanted to watch Bluray movies, not heat the room all night, thanks. I turn off it's power switch (on the rear of the unit) after I shut it down now.
The Apple TV uses 30W all the time - ok, this is Apple's fault, I think. There's no power switch, and I don't think there's even an option to shut it down. I just unplug it, which is inconvenient since we use the Airtunes function a lot.
I've even found some things that aren't really vampire power, but are what I call bugs and inefficiencies:
The color laser printer upstairs decided one day that sleep mode means "run all your motors and keep the fuser warm for no apparent reason." Averaging about 350W continuously (we don't use the upstairs of the house much, so it went unnoticed until I came home and saw the power usage chart. Reset the printer and all is well so far.
The basement dehumidifier was going through defrost cycles very frequently. You could see them as a sawtooth on top of the main power use graph. I took the machine apart, washed the coils and replaced some insulation that had fallen off one of the refrigerant lines. Power use dropped by about 50W and the defrost cycles happen much further apart.
Anyhow, I guess my main point is that your house is probably full of power wasting appliances, but unless you know what's going on, you'll never find them. Except the laser printer - I heard that one when I went into the room it's in.
You don't need anything as complicated as my setup, just something that will record the power usage (or even just current) coming in on your main power feed. It's really helpful though to know when things are going wrong.
Looking at the graph, I can see big things like the house a/c, the garage door opener, etc., but also small things - in the winter I could see the 8W used by the furnace's gas valve as it cycled the burners on and off, and I can see the 3W from the solenoid valve in the fridge when someone gets a glass of water from the dispenser on the fridge door.
Putting moderation advice in your