http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-02-13.htm#wattson

Here’s a link for anyone interested to a pdf publication by Christoffer Bjorkskog titled Human Computer Interaction In Smart Homes
http://www.hiit.fi/~oulasvir/58307110/smarthomes.pdf
in which he refers to a study that showed two distinct patterns of human interaction with the smart home.

Back to this post on tools for visualization of energy use, Dan, it puts me in mind of the similarities between the actual development of interactive technology in homes/buildings, and the development of endless, not yet connected or integrated tools in ‘web 2.0′.

Vera

I think it would be quite fun to get used to the idea that when the house seemed a bit dim, instead of making you think “Hmmm. I must turn a light on, or install some brighter bulbs”, it made you think “Hmmm. Perhaps I’d better turn that radio, computer, fan, light, and panel heater, off in the spare room before I go downstairs to watch telly”.

Who in the 1930s would think that brownouts would be deliberately recreated as a consumption feedback mechanism for householders in 2030?

Indeed, that’s a very interesting way to look at it.

When more houses were off-grid and had their own simple (i.e. non-regulated) petrol/paraffin-driven (dynamo) generators, there were presumably voltage drops as the load on the generator increased. When the lights went dimmer and the record player slowed down, you knew you were overloading the thing. Maybe that could be a useful way of showing people they’re using too much electricity?

Or maybe daily electric key-meters where each house is allocated a certain number of kWh per day (in return for a discount) and if by the evening you find you’re running out of your quota, you can choose to dim the lights, etc? Sounds a little ‘Soviet’, but perhaps that’s not always a bad thing.

It will be interesting to see whether low-voltage DC home ring main networks ever become common. So many devices now rely on 5V DC (TTL) or even lower/variable (CMOS) that with a little sensible standardisation we could surely do away with many, many adaptors & step-down chargers. And, perhaps, run many household devices off an array of batteries in the cupboard, recharged overnight or intelligently when network demand is lowest…

The ambient light level adjuster could then be set (and locked) by the householder as follows:

full ambient lighting = no (other) load
medium ambient lighting = normal maximum load
‘dim/unlit’ = abnormally heavy load

This ambient lighting wouldn’t be primary lighting, which would operate as normal, but sometimes the ambient lighting would be sufficient. So you could have backup lights that would come on (as if a power cut) when the ambient light fell to very dim levels.

So if the ambient lights were quite low, you’d know that consumption was heavy. And if their brightness suddenly changed you’d get an idea as to probable cause (ah, that’s probably Sam turning on the shower).

Would people prefer not to know that someone had just turned the oven on, put the kettle on and started drying their hair? Perhaps it’s a modern luxury to pretend that electricity is too cheap to meter?

After all, in the 30s the lights did tend to dim when you turned the electric fire on…

I think it would be quite fun to get used to the idea that when the house seemed a bit dim, instead of making you think “Hmmm. I must turn a light on, or install some brighter bulbs”, it made you think “Hmmm. Perhaps I’d better turn that radio, computer, fan, light, and panel heater, off in the spare room before I go downstairs to watch telly”.

Who in the 1930s would think that brownouts would be deliberately recreated as a consumption feedback mechanism for householders in 2030?