What is your big idea?
futureproofed powermeter

A domestic power consumption meter to facilitate fast and massive change in energy consumption behavior in developed world contexts. Designed for a networked society

interface	touch screen	assembly

While alternative energy sources come on-line slowly, endusers can create a responsive system, greatly reducing the environmental costs NOW. End-user effect is particularly strategic. Each unit savings at home, results in larger savings upstream as conversion losses add up-summarized in diagram 1.1. Power generation plants are operating near the thermo dynamic limit at 75% efficient, achieved through regulation and cost incentives for the large centralized power plants and refineries. Distribution of electricity is 94% efficient. The final conversion (the energy lost while converting electricity to light, heat or mechanical energy at the home (motors and pumps, or washing machines and refrigerators etc) is the least efficient at 51%. The overall efficiency of the network is 37%, that is, each kilowatthr generated creates .37kilowatthr of useful energy. The FPM addresses this inefficiency, to provide people an immediate way to change patterns of the consumption of energy at the household, community and regional level, specifically easy information on.

Adding this feedback loop, and effectively coupling the intelligence and agency of the humans on these node, transforms this distribution network into a smart complex system.

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The product:
As individual households FPM enables home power management that producing personal cost savings that will pay for it self (highend unit) with in 1/4. 3-4 months. At a community level FPM can smooth the peak demand. By reducing the peaks the (at pe greatly increasing the external environmental costs born. ). Using inline x10 communication along existing hardwire infrastructure.

The novel interaction strategies include:
Voice (NaturaspeakTM)

Legible information visualization strategies include:
- 1,2 and 5 year view of energy consumption patterns
- comparative views with community level consumption
- comparative view with an international counterpart in similar climatic region (Brussels and New York)
- signature of each appliance is 'learnt'

Ambitious change in paradigm/awareness towards end effect system, meets practical deployment:
The system has hardware and software. Alpha release can be done on an existing computer 'as a screensaver'

Energy audit: detection of leaks, conflicts: eg freezer works hard at night because of an unusually high room T°

Manufacturing process:
Design Strategies: a XXplatform device, this device will be produced as 1) xplatform screen saver + custom hardware; 2) stand alone energy neutral screen device; 3) reused platforms(XX): software and hardware to interface with Apple Newton, old model Palm Pilots; and electronic mechanical arm to display on etch-a-sketches and magnadoodles. These diverse products address diverse networked consumers.

Network effects:
The energy audit by detecting patterns of use from particular devices -

IMAGES

SOFTWARE -



interface visualization

REUSED PLATFORMS AND SCREEN SAVER-



STAND ALONE NEUTRAL SCREEN DEVICE -




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Partners:

Initial partnerships have been made with (soon to be finalized.)

This diagram indicates how much energy is lost over the various stages (eg conversion from primary energy to secondary energy (petroleum->gasoline), distribution, and final end use conversion from final energy to useful energy (eg. Burning gasoline-> kinetic energy for transportation).

The same can be said for electricity generation. Coal-> electricity. Transmission losses due to resistance occur. Final conversion losses Electricity-> light bulb.

From the diagram, you can see that the current efficiency for conversion from primary to secondary is pretty good (6.8/9.0 = 75%). The is quite good and rapidly approaching the thermodynamic limit. (This is due to regulation and cost incentives for the large centralized power plants and refineries).

Distribution doesn't account for very much of the losses (6.4/6.8 = 94% efficient)

The final conversion suffers the most losses (3.3/6.4 = 52% efficient) These conversions include

- electricity -> light
- crude oil -> transportation
- electricity -> motors and pumps (mechanical energy)

Over all efficiency is only 3.3/9.0 = 37% efficient (1st law efficiency)

As a result, there is much room for improvement on the end use side, and the savings "trickle up". Also, one unit of savings at the end use side result in larger savings upstream because the conversion losses add up.

Gigatons of oil equivalent.


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One unfortunate vision of our technological future is the "innovation imperative," which strongly implies that our things and appliances must always get "smarter." I am working together with Serge de Gheldere of the European design firm FutureProofed, to create a new domestic power meter that breaks that old cliché. Our proposed power meter is accurate, high-tech, and digital, yet as dumb as a brick.

You, the user, are the ultimate source of intelligence and value judgements here. This appliance responds to human language, yet is not itself "smart." Although it can talk to you and also listen and take action, it fails the Turing Test spectacularly. There's no pretense that you're addressing some Artificial Intelligence inside our power meter. You give the meter your words, and it reacts by a predesigned script. Its interaction is limited to data that you, the user, might actually want to know, practically and immediately, from a power meter.

The display of this device is entirely blank. Unlike most flashy, pushy, information appliances, it is anonymous and discreet. It doesn't explain itself or promote itself; it doesn't even offer a logo or a brand name. That's because you already know what it is for: it's your power meter. You got it, and you put it there. You don't need it to flash some display all the time, aimed at no one.

Being the human, you're the clever one in this relationship. You are the one with genuine awareness, who is making smart decisions about your energy consumption. The power meter merely does useful, dumb things that are inhumanly accurate, such as measuring your electricity consumption accurately in real time, storing the history of your energy consumption with an embedded microprocessor, and coordinating with your appliances to run them off-peak, thus saving you money.

This meter's most important relationship is not its tie-in to other household devices, but its core relationship with you, the human. When you speak up with an idea about power or meters, then it listens to you. Only then does it show a display.

In order to see the meter's display you have to speak to it-or rather, to the software speech-recognition function in its embedded chip. Even then, the meter doesn't merely blurt out a stream of data. Instead, it tests you to see if you yourself, the decision-maker, really know what is going on power-wise.

Let's say you are consuming ten kilowatts. If you say "Nine" or "Eleven," the meter will stay impassively blank. But if you get the first digit of the current rate right, the exact electricity consumption will then display. The meter will show you your exact current consumption rate at that moment: say, 10,768 watts. It can also show you the recent history of your usage, plotted against time, so that you can recognize your consumption patterns over a period of time and make some intelligent comparisons.

It doesn't take long to get this mechanical reward for demonstrating your intelligent human knowledge. You can get the first digit right within a few seconds, even if you are utterly ignorant of the power flowing through your home. But by first demanding your best guess, this product shifts the moral and intellectual responsibility from mere electrical hardware to you, a moral actor. This, of course, is where the responsibility belongs. Only you can really know; your meter just measures and displays. And if you don't know, then the meter displays this, too.

Because people are good at learning, this device ultimately makes itself obsolete. Soon you've been trained to recognize the patterns of your power consumption, and you can set up some optimal situation (say, buying green power). Then you can pass the meter on to your benighted neighbor.

However, this simple and dumb little device could easily be elaborated, so as to draw you deeper and deeper into the hidden realities of electrical networks. Learning about your own household power consumption is just the first game. Next you can learn about power in the context of your neighborhood, and learn how your own neighborhood compares to others. You might even learn about the hidden environmental impact of every wasted kilowatt-hour. For instance: how many living trees would it take to sequester the carbon dioxide that your fossil-fueled house spews into the atmosphere?

Why not extend the meter's time scale drastically? This would show the consequences of today's consumption on your grandchildren. A humble power meter then becomes an experimental feedback system for today's industrial metabolism. A meter becomes our visual monitor into the future, displaying the by-products of our actions and choices today.

With every purchasing decision, with every time we turn a light switch or a car key, we make unconscious (and possibly unwanted) choices that shape our lives. This direct relationship only seems abstract and distant because our meters are so badly designed. With a properly designed feedback loop, people can bring this abstraction into the realm of immediate awareness and action.

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