Smart appliances - new technology
Date posted: 2008-02-25
When electricity began reaching rural America in the late 1930s, families– especially hard-working homemakers–were delighted by the conveniences that came with it. No longer did they need a stovetop to heat an iron; washboards could be packed up forever in an attic.
While electric appliances have evolved with time, for the most part they remain silent, dutiful grunts that simply get a job done. But technology may soon change their role, creating a new generation of “smart” appliances–ones that can monitor electricity use beyond your home and respond accordingly.
What do such “smarts” mean for otherwise commonplace appliances? Say a family returns home at the end of the school/workday and turns on the lights, cranks up the thermostat, and throws a load of clothes in the dryer.
A standard clothes dryer would follow orders and continue using electricity to tumble clothes dry until it was purposely turned off or a timer told it to stop.
A smart clothes dryer, though, would notice the “peak demand” caused by an entire community of families arriving home – the electric utility industry’s equivalent of rush-hour traffic.
Source: Whirlpool Corporation
Energy efficient appliances such as
these Whirlpool models will likely be
the first to be outfitted with postage-stamp
size circuit boards, which can turn
the appliance off during peak periods
of electricity demand.
During periods of peak demand, more power plants must be brought into service and electric prices rise. The smart clothes
dryer, having noticed this increase in cost, could continue tumbling clothes but momentarily shut down its heating element, eliminating a draw of more than 5,000 watts from the grid while saving the family money.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a federally funded lab in Richland, Wash., put smart appliances to work last year to judge their potential. Two systems were tested: one used an Internet-based program that monitored fluctuations in energy prices and only operated appliances when power prices were low; the other relied on a small appliance-based circuit board that cut power use during peak demand.
The tests showed a big payoff from smart appliances: consumers saved roughly 10 percent on electricity bills using the Internet-based system, and widespread adoption of demand-monitoring, smart circuit boards could free up 20 percent of the nation’s power use at any given time. That would defer the need to build new generation and help curb greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide, blamed for contributing to climate change.
Circuit boards may be added to new high-efficiency appliances as soon as next year. “Chances are, dryers will be the first products that we offer them on,” says Whirlpool Corporation Project Manager Gale Horst, who contributed to the lab’s research.
More advances may follow, although appliance manufacturers like Whirlpool are currently keeping them under wraps. Horst hints that once appliances are able to communicate with utilities, “it really opens up our creative thinking.”
Sources: National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Whirlpool Corporation.
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