Fridge, oven, kettle - lend me your ears
Being able to talk to a computer has always been a dream of mine. As a child I marvelled as Dallas whispered instructions to the ship’s computer, Mother, in the film Alien – “Roll 92 degrees starboard yaw”. And I envied Deckard in Blade Runner telling his imaging software: “Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there”.
Soon such fantasies could exist beyond the realm of sci-fi. In fact, if the government’s proposals for a smart grid go ahead, talking to your computer could become a reality in all UK homes. How? Through electricity.
Both the Labour Party and and the Conservatives are committed to upgrading the UK’s electricity grid, which dates from the 1960s.
Not only is the nation’s grid ageing but it is also stupid. It works on the premise that electricity goes only one way – from central power stations through sub stations and then into homes and businesses.
Currently, energy cannot go the other way without a grid upgrade – that is, the public cannot sell any home-generated energy back into the grid, which is a blow when people are increasingly being encouraged to connect solar panels or wind turbines to their homes.
This is where the technology comes in. A smart grid would allow decentralised energy generation. With a smart meter installed in every home, it would allow information on energy use to be sent across the grid to electricity suppliers, giving them a more accurate view of electricity use nationwide.
Electricity suppliers have to produce a lot more power than there is demand. If there is a spike – such as when millions put the kettle on in an ad break during Coronation Street – they must be sure the lights do not go out.
A smart grid would lessen the amount of wasted electricity in the network. Not only would it allow suppliers to measure usage patterns – including spikes – more closely, it could also allow a firm to transfer power from one part of the grid to another more easily.
Now here comes the fantasy. Imagine you have a smart meter in your home that is connected to a smart grid. You now know how much energy every appliance in your house is using. The meter allows you to save money because you can set certain non-essential items only to function when electricity demand – and the price – is low. Your washing machine will only come on at midnight and your boiler picks the best time to switch on.
But should power be needed elsewhere, you have a deal with your energy provider that it can switch off these non-essential items and route the power elsewhere in the grid to meet unexpected demand. Your supplier could even take some of the energy from your electric car’s battery or your wind turbine, should you agree to it.
Every home acts like a battery for the grid – and these systems could easily become voice activated. This means that if you are away for the weekend and want to save heating by turning it off, but don’t want to come home to a freezing house, you can simply dial it up from your mobile phone and turn it on before you get home. You could remotely switch the oven on, or 10 minutes before you arrive home have the kettle boiled in time for a cuppa.
As ever, science has managed to realise fiction’s dreams. Let’s hope the sci-fi nightmare does not follow. “House, open the garage door. Open the door, house…”
By Tom Young