5 future energy technologies

5 Future Technologies That Will Slash Home Energy Use
Exotic gear will turn homes into energy producers instead of mere consumers
By David LaGesse
Posted March 18, 2009

Consumers have heard for years that solar, wind, and geothermal power might soon cut their monthly energy bills. But things get exciting, even exotic, looking a decade or two ahead. Scientists envision that light bulbs will talk to switches, furnaces to windows, and everything to the Internet. Homes generate their own power in basement plants. Windows and paint change color to harvest sunlight or reject it.


But it's one thing for scientists to talk game and another for builders and homeowners to play. Cutting home energy use means changing consumer behavior and industry practice. "The construction trades are among the most conservative out there," says Leon Glicksman, a professor of building technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's also a highly fragmented, diffuse industry of mostly small contractors installing separate systems in a home. One does heating, another lighting, a third the electrical system. There often is nobody who integrates the many systems with an eye to energy savings.

So as much as scientists like to talk whiz-bang for the future, what's also needed is training. "It'll be interesting to see 10 or 20 years from now how much progress is technology oriented and how much is education based," says Dariush Arasteh, who studies building technology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

That said, promising new technologies are emerging in labs, and some in commercial buildings, that in a decade or two could win over even the most skeptical builders and homeowners.

Tunable tints. In most U.S. climates, there is no easy answer when looking for energy-efficient windows. Today's panes tend to be specific to a type of weather—glass can be treated to reflect sunlight for warm-weather areas or not reflect it for colder climes. "If you're in St. Louis, you ideally want one in summer and another in winter," says Arasteh, whose lab studies window energy use.

Intense research is focusing on smarter windows that can change their coating on demand. A tint could block the sun in hot weather but fade on cold days to let in warm rays. Special "electrochromic" coatings darken when a small voltage is applied. A Minnesota company, Sage Electrochromics, already sells early versions that are used in some high-end homes, usually as skylights.

At current high prices, they make more economic sense for commercial buildings. Factories and offices could reduce daytime lighting costs with more windows but can't afford to let in the sun's heating rays. Homes tend to need more of their light at night and benefit less from natural illumination.

Still, commercial sales can help fine-tune production to get costs down. Then the entire window-producing industry must revamp itself for the new tech, an issue that has held up other energy-saving approaches, such as triple-pane windows. "It's like having a factory that's set up to make simple sandwiches," says Arasteh. "Now you're asking them to make club sandwiches. These changes take years."

Smart homes. Existing home heating, cooling, and lighting systems could save energy with some new smarts. Lights typically don't know they can turn off or dim when the sun comes up, and air handlers continue blowing heated or cooled air at open windows. Simple networking that got all of them talking could wring out a third of energy use in a building, says Neil Gershenfeld, an MIT computer science professor: "It's sort of an Internet of things."

Many companies have tried for the smart home. About 20 different families of gear already exist. But they're not made to work with one another, and none can expand to handle complex systems while being cheap enough to work with a simple light bulb. Gershenfeld's lab has developed a simple networking language—think Morse code—that can turn a light bulb into a node on the Internet, sending and receiving data. The same code could control complicated heating and cooling systems that respond to outside temperature changes, or as people come and go.

Prototypes already exist of hardware that a homeowner might install cheaply, even in an existing structure. One attraction: "We don't have to rewire the whole building," says Charlie Catlett, chief information officer at Argonne National Laboratory, which is installing an early test of the system in one of its buildings. Plus, "these things are so cheap and small that we can actually think about putting them into things like chairs and light bulbs."

Smart homes

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January 6, 2009, 12:01 am
The Smart Home Is Still Looking for a Market
By Steve Lohr
The vision of the smart home has been around for decades. And an appealing vision it is — a computerized triumph of automation, controlling a house’s lighting and heating, even the kitchen.
Forgot to turn off the lights in the rush to get out the door? No problem, send a text message or voice command and the lights are shut off remotely. The smart home, of course, will have intelligent appliances, connected to the Internet, which can both cook or refrigerate food as directed from a cellphone or personal computer. A smart refrigerator, with sensors, can detect when goceries have been used and automatically reorder online.

Yet the smart home has remained a dream for years, just over the horizon. And the horizon keeps receding. Along the way, there have been intriguing pilot projects and lab experiments, but nothing that justified the extra cost to consumers.

Today, despite the spread of broadband Internet and home networks, consumers remain deeply skeptical about smart-home technology, according to a new study that will be released on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“Mass market consumers have almost no interest in using ‘technology’ for home ‘automation’ or ‘control,’ ” concluded a market study sponsored a smart-home research group, supported by companies including Whirlpool, Cisco Systems, Direct Energy, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Zensys.

That suggests smart-home devices are not about to flood the marketplace. Whirlpool, the appliance maker, had long done smart-home research and pilot projects. But Carol Priefert, a senior manager in the technology group, observed, “Whirlpool is a mass company. I don’t bring products out until there is a mass market.”

Still, the technical foundation to make smart homes a reality is spreading. In 2008, 87 percent of American households had broadband Internet, up from 70 percent in 2005, the study noted.

What is needed is a “killer app” — a compelling use — and some government encouragement, according to Tim Woods, a partner in the consulting firm Poco Labs and an expert in smart home technology.

The killer app, Mr. Woods said, will be energy efficiency. To jumpstart that market, he said, the federal government will need to mandate the installation of smart meters in homes, phased in over years, as California is doing.

Then, Mr. Woods added, the government needs to guide the development of open standards in hardware and software, so the smart meters can communicate with a television set-top box, cellphone or PC. Those devices will serve as remote controls that allow a person to see how much energy a house is consuming, at what cost and suggest heating, lighting and air conditioning settings to save money.

The political timing, Mr. Woods said, is right. President-elect Barack Obama, he observed, has vowed to “make a huge effort around energy management.”

Once a technology platform is in place, Mr. Woods predicts, the smart-home market for intelligent appliances and other devices will take off. “The business excuse is going to come from energy management,” he said. “And that is what will allow the broader smart-home vision around time-saving and convenience to gain momentum.”