GE Reinvents The Refrigerator

Over the past few years we have waited for GE's ecomagination to change from pretty pictures to reality, and now we are beginning to see the results. In 2009 they are rolling out "Smart" Energy Management Enabled Appliances that can talk to the electric utility to manage loads and reduce peak power demand. VP Kevin Nolan explains:

''Peak hour energy demand is growing faster than total energy demand. It is imperative that we begin to shift some of the energy load from peak hours to other parts of the day -- helping to avoid the need to build new power plants to meet the demand. At GE, we believe that peak load reduction is the next opportunity in energy saving appliances. We believe that smart, energy management enabled appliances will be the next phase of innovation,'' explained Nolan. ''It's not enough to simply use less power, as Energy Star encourages today, we now need to consume our power more intelligently.''

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Stephen308]

Peak energy information can be transmitted down the power lines as can other forms of information. This is but one use for our existing transmission lines.

Consumers are often protected from price spikes by regulation. The day may come when consumers will have to pay the going rate on an hour by hour or minute by minute bases. The going rate of power would be transmitted right on the power line. So, for instance, a homeowner might set a house thermostat to heat or cool the house to a certain point. Using more heat or cooling when rates are low and less when rates are high. Defrosting is a unigue feature. How about a rechargable car that will look at anticipated power costs and allow it's self to be charged overnight when rates hit their anticipated low for the evening?

All this will be far more important when deregulated power combined with real time pricing to consumers will cause the consumer to demand appliances to help him purchase power when it's at it's cheapest and thus when it causes the fewest amount of generators to run and redistributes load to cause fewer generators to have to be built.

All of this can HELP but we need as many carbon free nuclear plants built as fast as we can to reduce our need for other more costly and dirty forms of energy.

[RealHRCFansVoteObama]

I see where it manages consumption, but I didn't see anywhere in the article that the new units use less.

Sun Frost already makes a far more efficient line of refrigerators and freezers.

[newshawk14]

I found the article interesting and informative. I've designed building lighting control systems, that
could shed loading, when the grid is being overloaded with demand.

[undeluded]

I would have liked more information about the technology. This is a PR release that's light on details. Do 'smart' appliances have storage systems - i.e. batteries or capacitors - that allow power to be pulled from the grid during off-peak hours and then trickled into the appliance as needed? What's the technology behind the 'smarts'?

[SCG]

I always thought they could do this with deep freezers. But I'm not a food safety or quality expert, and what the effect of a temperature rise over several hours could have, day in and day out, I have no clue.

Preferably a freezer would be off , overnight when your least likely to open it. That would be counter the peak load optimum although.