Smart Plug to Monitor your Appliances

To control the energy use of your home’s individual appliances, you have to  make your wall sockets smarter or at least this company thinks so.

That’s the idea behind Toronto Canada based ZerofootPrint’s new device called the  TalkingPlug. It’s a device that fits on existing electrical outlets to offer detailed information on electricity use by your energy hungry appliances.

The TalkingPlug is designed to be a controllable device on a wireless local area network (WLAN) either in your home or business. The plug is programmable so the appliances can be controlled automatically or by a person to fully power down your electronic devices or the power strip they are plugged into greatly cutting down the vampire power they consume when not in use.

When several plugs are installed, you can create a network that can send information via a network router to Zerofootprint who can  monitor your energy use, analyze the data and show you how much power you’re using compared to your neighbors.

The plugs should cost around $50 and are expected to be available in the coming week. A bit pricey if you want to put many of them in your house or business, however as with most electronics we expect the price to lower over time once it is readily accepted in the market.

There are a few other companies also developing energy-management solutions to manage electricity use. The challenge remains in getting a “smart” device to interpret data from a “dumb” appliance cost effectively. All of them also seem to lack additional business intelligence (BI) to allow you to make some more quantifiable decisions

Over time we expect that these type of devices will eventually be built into appliances as standards emerge as to how they interface to a WLAN or other wireless network  are set. This will take a number of years so these types of solutions will fill the gap until then… just like what happened with your PC… Ethernet Adapter, Modem Cards, Video Cards and Printer interface cards all used to be add on options and were robust businesses for manufacturers for a number of years prior to them being integrated into the PC.