Newswise — If you knew you could head to your local gas station and fill up for a dollar a gallon between 8:00 and 10:00 pm, would you go out of your way to do so?
Of course—most of us would. Now an undergraduate research team at Michigan Technological University is attempting to apply the same principle to home energy usage.
Six students on the Home Energy Management System Senior Design team, working under faculty advisor John Lukowski, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, have designed a prototype “smart meter”—a replacement for the average home’s watt meter that tracks electrical energy consumption.
“There’s currently a mismatch between how much electrical power we can generate and when consumers need that power,” Lukowski explains. “The goal was to create a device that would record, analyze and store data about energy consumption and current time-of-day energy pricing.”
The benefit? Homeowners can find out when power is at its lowest use—and price.
The meter is also capable of controlling household devices based on time and date.
“Say it has been determined that the price of power is lowest at 2:00 am,” says Lukowski. “The meter can be set to automatically start the dishwasher at that time each day.”
Apart from the lowering of individual electrical power costs, the group believes that widespread use of the meters will eventually lead to a reduction in new power plants being built nationwide.
“We need excess power to meet the current surge demands, which means building more power plants,” Lukowski points out. “If we shifted the load to off-peak times, we could eliminate those surges altogether.”
Hopefully the meter, which is still in prototype, will be available to consumers soon. Until then, there are things homeowners can do now to improve their power-consumption smarts: • Run the vacuum, do a load of wash, or turn on the outdoor sprinklers when neighbors are asleep—very early in the morning or late at night. • Don’t run five household devices at once—try to stretch out the usage throughout the day (and night). • Run the dishwasher and clothes dryer at times when you are not also using lights, TV, computers and other electrical devices.
Expert: to contact:John Lukowski, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, Michigan Technological University
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