Nathanael Greene's Blog
Making the invisible visible and doing it beautifully
July 31, 2007
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Living Sustainably , Solving Global Warming
Last week, Wired carried a very smart article (Clive Thompson Thinks: Desktop Orb Could Reform Energy Hogs) about how the invisibility of our energy consumption makes reforming our profligate habits much harder and how gadgets that make it visible could help. I couldn't agree more. This is one of the reasons that I love the screen in a Toyota Prius--drivers get real time feedback on their driving and they generally become more efficient drivers.
Clive spends most of the article talking about the Ambient Orb which SoCalEdison configured to show demand on the grid, but to my mind, the really exciting gadget is the one that he mentions at the end of the article: the Wattson. Produced by DIY Kyoto, a hip trio in London, the Wattson is a beautiful piece of industrial design that show people how much energy they're using in the home through numbers and pretty lights. Finally, a gadget that my interior-designer wife would welcome into the home.
I've emailed the folks at DIY Kyoto to find out when a version of the Wattson will be available in the US. I want one!
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Comments
Ian Wilker — Aug 2 2007 01:18 AM
The Wattson really grabs me. I'm a big believer in using "interactive play," as the Wattson's website calls it, to transform an activity that you should do into an activity that you want to do. Makes all the difference in the world.
I think you could take this a step further, though. It seems clear to me that the data re home electricity demand is fully present in the Wattson, which means that a mash-up is possible -- a clever programmer could surely find a way to cf demand data against average electricity rates over time -- wouldn't it be cool if the Wattson was telling you, in fact challenging you over, the monthly electric bill you're looking at?
Make it fun, and make it signify on the level of my wallet, and you've got a powerful push toward doing thing in a more sensible way.
Don Wells — Aug 2 2007 01:49 PM
The P3-International Kill-A-Watt P4400 is a cheap option, at about $22. It is intended to measure the consumption of a single thing plugged into a socket. I have used mine to find out the consumption of things like a TV and VCR when they are turned off and a cell phone charger that is always plugged in. I plan to monitor my old refrigerator in order to estimate the payback time if I invested in a new high-efficiency model. However, the P4400 cannot measure the consumption of my central A/C system, which is the single largest consumer of electricity in my house at this moment. The Wattson can probably do that, because it is a clip-on current sensor that can measure at the main panel.
Don Wells — Aug 5 2007 05:02 PM
The Energy Bulletin just cited a discussion of a
"smart meter" proposed in southern California. The article cited in the original says that there is a display connected wirelessly to the power company's meter, and that appliances can connect wirelessly in order to switch on/off depending on instantaneous electricity price. The Wattson will be irrelevant if you can have a power meter like this one.
marguerite manteau-rao — Aug 7 2007 01:45 PM
Love it! I am a firm believer that part of the answer to the climate crisis problem does lie in making the invisible visible. Humans are sensing, experiential beings. Scary words are quickly forgotten, not constant visual, dynamic visual clues.
I also like the idea brought up by Don Wells (above), of smart meter.
marguerite
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
"The Daily Sins of a Green Girl Wannabe"
Nathanael Greene — Aug 8 2007 09:54 AM
Thanks for your comments Ian, Don, and Green Girl. I agree that smart meters that can communicate with appliances and make adjustments based on real-time pricing would ultimately offer greater energy savings. Demand response aggregators in NY and MA are already starting to string together significant amounts of this type of "dispatchable" demand reductions and being paid for them through the market.
But what I like about the Wattson is the "dynamic visual clues" that it provides. In fact in my email to DIY Kyoto, I asked them if they could develop a wireless connectivity and widget that I could include on this blog. Combine that with the mash-up that Ian suggests and we could really start talking about revealing our daily sins.
marguerite manteau-rao — Aug 8 2007 12:29 PM
Will you alert me when you get the Daily Sins indicator widget? :)
marguerite