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The Phantom of the Outlet
Students at the University of Nebraska are developing technology to combat vampire energy and we want to know if you think it’s a good idea. What are your thoughts on these smart houses?
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On February 11th, 2011 at 7:00 pm Milt Said:
I love the idea. I didn’t love the presentation very much, but the idea transcends the poor production.
Here are some of my thoughts on how to make it flow a bit better. You could demonstrate how much electricity is being used around the house by doing a split screen – showing the load – even when something is just plugged in – and don’t stop with one thing. Plug in a TV, and a few chargers, and whatever else makes a difference. People would be amazed. The thing is to show how this thing actually works – do you just plug it into an outlet – does it have to wired in at the electrical panel – this isn’t really explained, and without that folks might not be so interested in it. The only place we see it is on the experimental wood panel, and it appears that it might be wired directly to the meter – I don’ t know if that’s true but it kind of looks that way. I wasn’t really sure what the shot of the chip with the quarter was saying. Finally the amazing thing is the wireless aspect. I am stunned by that – who knew that you could do that, or that this machine can figure it out – does it do it without ANY programming? If so that’s a huge selling point. And the green button – again – so wonderful! I hate to say it but that just makes it that much better. Finally I had some difficulty in understanding all the speakers. You might think about adding sub-titles for some folks.
Over all though I was really impressed by this technology. I would love to see this in action. Frankly I don’t know that you really need a model house to show it off – unless it’s still pretty much in the experimental stage. It looks so good, that it seems like you could plug this into any house and it would work – did I miss something there?
Thanks again!
Milt Lee
On February 11th, 2011 at 10:22 pm Diane Young Said:
The most important step that any young person can make to create a more sustainable planet earth is to decide to have no more than 2 children. All the best efforts of our hearts and minds will be to no avail unless we can slow or reverse the population inrease. We have already exceeded the carrying capacity of this earth and all our cleverness can’t change that fact.
On February 12th, 2011 at 10:31 pm Ryan T Said:
Every bit counts, but we should keep in mind that “vampire loads” are still a very small percentage of the typical home’s energy consumption. And many power adapters these days (like those for cell phones) draw almost no current when there’s nothing plugged in (you can get some idea by how warm they are). So this isn’t going to “destroy your home’s energy waste” (per the Planetforward email). Much of that occurs with losses related to water and space heating/air conditioning, refrigeration (especially older units), then lighting.