Power (Control) to the People

October 14, 2008 - What if you could log on to a system and see how your energy consumption is going for the month? Better yet, what if you could program your household appliances, your heating system, even your electric window shades (if you have them) to automatically optimize themselves 24-7 to ensure that you're doing everything possible to save every watt you can?

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, such a "revolution in smart electronics is going to give consumers unprecedented ability to control energy consumption and save money." This will come as the result of newly mounted efforts to network household electronics with energy providers, monitor their consumption, and then automatically adjust behaviors to achieve optimal energy efficiency.

One such project is the ZigBee Alliance, an association of companies working to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. Working with both electronics manufacturers and utility companies, ZigBee is establishing standards for wireless intelligence capabilities for everyday devices.

As utility companies move to wireless metering systems, consumers will have the opportunity to tie-in their household appliances and heating & cooling systems to networks that can monitor each item's energy use. Some of these monitoring devices will even allow users to determine when appliances get used and to set alerts for when energy caps are reached.

This can be especially useful as utility companies offer more incentives for off-peak use (which they can now monitor more precisely with these new metering systems) allowing consumers to set their washing machine to go on a 3:00 a.m. or home entertainment system to shut down completely during the work day.

For further details see:

The Wall Street Journal

The ZigBee Alliance