It’s been a good year for Aussie ingenuity if the winners of the Australian’s Innovation Challenge are any indication. Taking out top gong was Jeremy Woodhill with his Smart GPO, an intelligent power point that can save households up to $5 a week with no effort whatsoever.
The Smart GPOs are small, remote controlled switches embedded in a power point, which intelligently switch off when you leave home, without turning off any essential power supplies. Given how much electricity prices are set to rise in the near future, let’s hope to see this at a retail level in the very near future.
Other winners of the challenge include:
• Mark Kendall for his Nanopatches for Improved Vaccines
• Marcela Bilek for Biological Cloaking
• Gary Kong for Digital Diagnostics – The Remote Microscope Network
• David Miljak for Advanced sensor system for large scale-ore sorting
• Andrew Verden for NICTA’s Indigo Solver
• Joe Wolfe for The Physclips Platform: A new way to learn Physics
• Rick Shine for Toad vs Toad exploitation of the cane toad’s toxic chemicals
Congrats to the winners, who all make my daily writing about gadgets seem insignificant. You guys are awesome.
light487
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 3:13 PMOr you could just get in the habit of turning everything off when you’re not using it….. not just when you’re going out.
Tim H
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 3:26 PMI think the concept is that even devices in standby continue to use power. When you leave home, you don’t need them in standby any more. This is where the power saving will happen. I for one can’t event get to the powerpoint behind my tv any more, so this would be useful.
light487
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 4:03 PMNo I mean I actually flick the switch on the wall off.. :) It’s actually much easier than switching off each indvidual item, especially if you have them all hooked up to a powerboard :)
TSH
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 4:25 PM>> I for one can’t event get to the powerpoint behind my tv any more, so this would be useful.
Same here. Some kind of remote-controlled thing could be handy.
MD
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:59 AMForgetting that all remote thingies need to be on standby mode all of the time, waiting for that signal to switch on… Ok, may use less power than the TV on standby mode, but the manual switch saves the most power (when usable and used.)
Lachlan Bromage
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:23 AMTSH.
Belkin has (not sure if they still do) a remote control surge board. 8 ports. 6 of them operate on a remote control and 2 stay on all the time. I got a bill approx $490, bought 2 of em, next bill, $279. Obviously you have to remember to turn them off but when you have a full blown computer setup at the foot of your bed, turning the monitors, speakers, printer, and non essential things off whilst leaving your computer on (to download etc) is awesome.
Also have one on my tv / home theatre. Awesome when you get up off the lounge to go to bed and you just press a switch and BLAM – no standby mode on anything.
jason
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 4:56 PMyeah that[s exactly what i do.
in one flick my entire entertainment system is off and then later its all back on just as easily and all back to the state i turned them off at.
however that only 1 GPO there are plenty of other where this would help me
iNiff
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 3:47 PMGood idea, needs expanding. Who said I even want to watch TV the minute I get home? What about the hours I’m asleep?
Hotels know how it works, take the key out and everything non-essential switches off. And essential is only Air, path lighting, clock radio and the fridge.
David F
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 3:55 PMI don’t get it. There have been various smart systems available for at least 20 years. All of the major electrical manufacturers have various systems. They are all over priced and a $5 microprocessor or two, $2 movement sensors, some relays and you can build your own system for spare change. I did it years ago. So what is special about this?
StevoTheDevo
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 3:59 PMI wanna know more about the Cane Toad thing!
cayal
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 4:08 PMIf you go to the article page it has more info on it (not sure if you saw it)
Greg
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 4:59 PMJust some dude that goes around licking toads…. nothing new. :)
Lindsay Handmer
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:03 PMI am not convinced on the Smart GPO maths.
At around 20 cents a KW/h, $5 is 25KW/h’s saved a week.
Or around 150 watts per hour saved.
My TV, DVD player and stereo all plug into the same socket. With a power meter, I get sub 3W of standby power used an hour.
Unless you have 75+ AV setups or some device that draws huge standby wattage for no reason, I can’t see you saving $5 a week.
This doesn’t include that you will actually be using the devices some of this time too.
Jewel
Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 8:08 AMIt sounds like an average to me. DCC publish an average house hold has a power bill of $2500. Phantom power uses around 10% ($250). That works out at about $5 per week??
Sicarius123
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:57 PMI still have too many shitty electronics that would be flashing “12:00″ when I came home for this kind of thing to interest me.
James
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 11:12 PMI got one of these device hooked up to the surge protector (for entertainment devices) and every time you need to switches on you have to wait a couple of minutes until the capacitors in the surge protector power up. I still use it but im starting to get sick of it.
Marek
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 3:50 AMDon’t most hotel rooms already do this?
amiga_tone
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 7:58 AMHow about you get Australia to find a new source of power that is cheaper? Seriously, since I moved to the US, my bill has dropped from $145 a quarter (in Sydney) to $45 a quarter (in San Francisco). I use the same amount of power here than I did back in Australia but for some messed up reason it costs so much more to power an apartment in Sydney.