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Green Home Management – Can we learn from PCs?

By Dale Taylor (Intel) (55 posts) on March 15, 2009 at 9:20 pm

If we could update our homes like we have the Microprocessor we really could improve the cost of building and managing the power consumed in our homes.  I’ve become more aware of just how much power I consume and continue to search for ways to cut that aspect of my life.

This summer I spent 6 weeks in Europe and learned that Europeans are well ahead of us here in the US as far as power conservation goes.  In Barcelona, Spain my hotel room had a master switch just inside the entry door that with one easy click turned off all the lights and most power.  It was a very simple way to get the lighting how I liked it and know I could easily turn it all back on when I returned.  I have stayed in hundreds of hotel rooms in the US and have NEVER seen this, yet EVERY room I stayed in Europe had it.

In London the room had a similar feature but it was more strictly enforced.  To turn the power on in my room I had to insert my room key into a slot and that would then enable the power.  The theory there was that when you leave the room you take your key with you and all the power is off.  One thing that surprised me was that the power to the Air Conditioner went off too (there was a 2 minute delay).  Wow, that really cuts power consumption.  Fortunately the power to the mini-fridge did stay on.

How can we update our homes in the US and learn from these techniques?  I have been reviewing my utility bills and using my “Kill-A-Watt” device and really have become annoyed at how much power simple things are consuming.  Examples of things that bother me are these scent units that heat up and with a fan blow scented air around your house.  Wow, that a waste of power!

I hope we can learn from our friends across the pond and use some of their ideas to update our homes in the US.

Categories: Academic, Uncategorized
Tags: conservation, Power Efficiency, research

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Comments (5)

March 16, 2009 5:38 AM PDT rreis Total Points: 2,910 Brown Belt

but those are in Hotels. It would surely be a nifty feature to inside one own house.

March 16, 2009 6:55 AM PDT Peter Troast

Sitting here in an American hotel room (the name of which I'll spare) it will take 8 separate actions to turn off all the electric draws. That I've never been in a US hotel with a master switch is one of those legacies of cheap energy that will forever more be in our rearview mirror. At EnergyCircle, we wholeheartedly agree that the place to start is with measurement. The Kill-a-Watt is a great product for individual appliciances, but whole house electricity monitors like TED (the energy detective) are available right now. For the millions of us for whom a smart meter from the utility is years off, the opportunity for an intelligent house is now. We've found that simple awareness alone (the monitor sits in full view in the most lived-in room in our house) has produced savings and engaged the entire household, kids especially, in hunting down inadvertently left on devices, or scaling back the use of the worst wattage appliances.

March 16, 2009 12:27 PM PDT Jeremy Saldate

Hi Dale, I've noticed the same "room energy" feature when travelling in China. It's interesting, the US points at China as the worst polluter, and a significant drain on world energy resources; yet simple features like this one are automatically building energy conservation into Chinese culture. Looks like there's something North America can learn here. You should also point out the potential impact software design can have on power. Many people don't recognize simple things like: if you use a black background instead of any colored background, you consume less power; polling activities can dramatically increase power consumption by software applications; etc. The surprising thing is that most of these activities can be altered (e.g. use a dark background for a change, use an event-based programming model, etc.) with little to no impact on performance. Please check out: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/energy-efficient-softwar e/ if you weren't already aware of these and other power BKMs. -Jeremy

March 16, 2009 1:31 PM PDT Jeremy Saldate (Intel) Total Points: 114 Registered User

Not sure how a space made it into the link above. Here is the correct link: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/energy-efficient-softwar e/

March 16, 2009 1:57 PM PDT Dale Taylor (Intel) Total Points: 9,564 Brown Belt

Rreis: it could be accomplished in a home on a per room basis? I am sure new exciting ways could be derived with time and effort, just as Intel has done with the processor. Peter and Jeremy, Thanks for the great comments, and for some reason that latest link has a space before the last character also. Just a simple edit will fix it, remove the '%20" that shows up.

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