Picowatt – Smart Grid for the Rest of Us
If you read yesterday’s post on monitoring your smart appliances with new gadgets from the Consumer Electronics Show, you may have been left wondering, “What if I don’t want to replace all of my dumb appliances?” I know I was.
Well, leave it to CES to solve problems created by CES.
The Picowatt, shown in the video above, is a plug/brick with WiFi guts. It can show you not only how much energy your appliances are using, but also lets you shut them down remotely. It’s the holy grail of smart grid (information and control), without having to landfill your current fleet.
The 30% energy savings promised by the woman in the video seems a bit high to me, and you almost certainly won’t save 30% of your energy. The savings would only be realized by someone on a time-of-use rate with their local utility if they programmed the device to shut down their appliances during peak loads.
It’s a worthy goal, and probably the wave of the future, but for now, most of us pay the same 8 cents per kWh, no matter what time it is. So running the dryer at 3 AM costs the same as it would at noon.
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