I know there is some desire to have a smart grid that can shut off/sequence demand on some appliances, but how about backing up a step first? Why not move toward meters (readers) that can be read easily inside the house or at the PC on the fly? Why just have a monthly statement or a simple meter reading? If customers could see their instantaneous power usage or even pull up trended data many would be more inclined to modify behaviour accordingly. It would become obvious when the major power users kicked on. It seems silly in this day and age that I find myself outside timing a meter to determine how much a blower is using, or an oven, dryer, etc. It's not that it is difficult, it is just inconvenient and indirect and very few will ever do it. If customers could see their usage easily in real time (rather than hand calculating) they would be inclined to live more efficiently.
Great idea! The first thing you need to do in order to save energy is to know how you are spending it. I'll take your idea a bit further and ask for a power usage report from every outlet in the house. There's nothing like that currently available (that I know of), but the technical problem sounds about as complicated as ground fault protectors. A smart outlet could put its ID and power usage on the power lines, and a power line reader could transfer the data to a PC. Given the computing and communications capability in such a setup, it would be only a little more to provide ON/OFF control for each outlet. Once the outlet control/data is available at your PC, it could also be available anywhere on the Internet. So you could check if you left the lights on with your BlackBerry, and turn them ON/OFF as well.
Buy yourself one of the radio current clamp meters off eBay. $40 or so and you can carry a display around the house with you that tells you what power is coming through your feeder at the meter or wherever you choose to put the clamp/transmitter. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/THE-OWL-SMART...yZ106260QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I have designed and installed such a system on a somewhat bigger scale covering 100 sq km of Greece and giving control for the utility over 250 water pumps used for irrigation. This gives direct control of 10 MW of power. It includes selective points where current, voltage, phase and temperature are measured.
The reason is the utility grid can use a smart grid to affect load on the grid, it is used here to control off peak hot water heaters. They are controlled remotely from the generation plant over the grid to smooth the base load. The utility has no interest in informing the consumer, therefore they wont.
T.E.D. : Electricity Monitor, Energy Monitor, Power Monitor This is exactly what you want. Mine is running reading 1.620 kW right in front of me.
I was going to mention the T.E.D system, but for those that are looking to reduce their loads on individual loads, buy a Kill-a-watt. It is very eye opening to see how much certain items draw, especially when they are "off" For example a Satellite receiver might draw 75 watts ON, and 75 watts Off. Put it on a outlet strip! Most houses are filled with a couple of dozen of these phantom loads! Cell phone chargers, stereos, TV, razors, electric toothbrushes, microwaves, washer/dryer controls, Go through your house and you will be amazed. Ic arus
Thanks for the T.E.D. link. That appears to be what I'm after. Utilities should be encouraged/prodded to provide this sort of thing to homes/businesses even if is done through a charge like for converter boxes. The point is to get the average consumer's awareness up. Kill-a-watt is great for 110 appliances. Too bad I can't use it for the oven or dryer, or more importantly the HVAC system. I've been surprised at how few vampire loads I have. This has been improving on many small appliances over the years. I remember my old ~25 year old chess computer transformer block would run very hot all the time even when not in use (I'll have to find it and hook it up just to learn what it was drawing.) I kept plugging things in expecting to find surprise loads, but found far less than expected. Many are indistinguishable from the Kill-a-watt zero (which often reads about 1) while others pull another 1-4 watts typically. Still, they add up and it is a good idea to be aware of them. My PC's are the worst discretionary offenders because I built them to be fast some years ago when PC power drain was peaking. These will be addressed when replacement becomes necessary. I've already cut one's draw by about 25% total by replacing the big CRT with a bigger LCD.
I use a Watts Up to figure out individual loads. The TED turned out to be much better for two reasons: 1) It finds the loads that you don't even know about. For me a piano heater(!) and the TV distribution amplifier in the attic were worthwhile eliminations. 2) You can tap off any 220 or 110 load in the fuse box. This allows me to profile all the heavy loads that do not have a plug. Finding out that my heat pump takes 15 Watts when off is something I know I need to solve somehow.
The 15 watt is probably from the control board(s) which need to be live all the time,,, unless you could relay control you t-stats to trigger the control boards on before they call for heat (or cool) Icarus
No doubt you are spot on. The issue is that I have the thermostat turned to the off position. When in the cool or heat position, I accept that some current draw is needed (but not 15 Watts). It's when the off switch is off, I really want the equipment to be ....well off. I'm aware that quite a few manufacturers implement off as "Sort of" off. I'm making an effort to buy only items that actually turn off power when the power off switch is off. Sooner or later voting with wallets works.
I would have thought a IC control panel would consume milliwatts, not watts of power when in stand-by.
My uneducated guess would be that there are a series of transformers somewhere eating amperage. Icarus
Wouldn't a smart manufacturer use a rechargable battery to keep the device in standby? Then it could consume no power in standby.
