Saving household energy with your cell phone
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Posting Date | 24 January 2010
Countries | Germany , Pan European
Type of News | Other news
Target Group | Building professionals, Building occupants
Editor organization URL | http://www.fraunhofer.de
Fraunhofer scientists are developing programs that help show at a glance how much energy devices are consuming. At the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the researchers will be showing how a cell phone can help save energy. To give the consumers a sense of where the energy guzzlers hide, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) in Germany has developed an application that demonstrates the energy consumption of individual devices in the household.
Each device is given a power plogg, which is a small adapter located between the power plug and the power outlet. It reports the power consumption on any given time to a PC via a radio signal. People can tell which device is guzzling the most energy by taking a look at the computer monitor. But the FIT experts have also provided a far more convenient way to access the information: "Using a cell phone as the display and control unit allows people to check the energy consumed by their devices or appliances", explains Dr. Eisenhauer, who developed the system. "For example it can be used to display the consumption by room, switches devices on and off, and dim lights. Learn more about the technology behind and various other scenarios to use it at http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/january/save-energy.jsp.
Submission URL(s) | http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/january/save-energy.jsp
Source Languages | English , German
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