”This is energy efficiency with sizzle.”
As if presenting evidence for this thesis, Michael McGrath glanced up at the columns supporting a decorative flying bridge in the 30-foot-high foyer of the Electric Smart House recently completed in Stone Mountain.
But it wasn`t really the architecture of the home, with its massive, Southern-style columned front porch and its grand, sweeping staircase, to which he referred.
The home`s sizzle comes more from an automated energy management system that well may have future homeowners checking how much it is costing to run their dryers and dishwashers with the zeal they now devote to checking the evening`s TV listings.
”Energy efficiency is a tough sell, with its hairshirt image,” said McGrath, director of customer programs for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of utility companies that manages the Electric Smart House project.
”It`s better if it`s perceived as sexy,” he said. ”Packaging it with home automation is a way to do that.”
The home`s system is not only sexy, it is an obsessive penny-pincher`s dream.
The system employs a touch-screen control panel that graphically displays how much it is costing to run any particular appliance and suggesting how it might be possible to run it more cheaply.
You can use it to run a diswasher or dryer at an off-peak period such as early morning when electric rates might be a third or less than what they would be during heavy-use hours.
If you don`t feel like figuring out the off-peak hours by yourself, the system will communicate with the utility company to find them out, and automatically run the appliance at the cheapest period.
On the other hand, if you don`t want to be bounced out of bed by the start-up of a noisy dishwasher at 3 a.m., you can set some other time or just turn it on normally with a manual override.
The system not only tells you whether it is costing 3 cents or 12 cents to run the dishwasher for an average cycle, it also can display figures and graphs telling how much you spent running the appliance day-by-day for a month or month-by-month for a year.
”It shows you actual dollars, telling you, `This is what it is taking out of your pocket to run these appliances,` ” said Jason Levine, project manager for Custom Command Systems of College Park, Md., which made the control panel.
The system also incorporates what`s called an energy setback strategy that will subtly alter temperatures in a range of one to three degrees so that your heater or air conditioner is working hardest when rates are lowest and cutting back when they rise. Levine claimed most people won`t notice the difference.
Or you can set the heating/air conditioning monitor to maximum savings mode or vacation mode, making the change in temperature more evident but saving more money.
The whole system, installed in a highly insulated house with energy-efficient appliances and mechanical systems, could save a consumer as much as 50 percent in energy costs, according to McGrath.
The energy management component depends on what is called time-of-use pricing, which the country`s utilities offer to commercial customers but not, as a rule, to residences. Georgia Power Co. supplies electricity at time-of-use rates to the demonstration house on an experimental basis.
But McGrath and Levine insist that utilities will offer the variable rates-which, of course, must be approved by state oversight commissions-as soon as there is significant demand.
The fact that power company contributions of $2.4 million went toward developing the home`s systems and building the house tends to indicate the utilities would be willing to offer the pricing.
”I think that will happen,” said Levine. ”Utility companies are interested in enhancements and options. This is good for them because they can lower prices this way.”
Some of the $2.4 million went to the Electric Power Research Institute for development of the energy management system and the electric utility gateway, which electronically talks to the power company to find out when the rates are lower.
The institute, along with Carrier Corp., also developed a variable speed heat pump that supplies heating, air conditioning and hot water with an efficiency rating twice that of the average heat pump now in use. It is said to be three or four times as efficient as conventional fossil fuel furnaces.
Aside from the energy system, the 3,079-square-foot house, which will go on the market for about $300,000, offers the typical array of features that home automation buffs have come to expect in the way of electronic wizardry. Among them are:
– Audio and video interfacing that allows an entertainment source in one part of the home to be transmitted anywhere in the house. For instance, someone operating the touch screen could command a videotape playing on a VCR in the family room to be shown also in the bedroom. The same thing could be done with music from a compact disc.
– A security system that includes video monitoring of various rooms, such as a child`s room, and zoning, so that the system can be configured to allow people into one part of the house but not another. The control panel pinpoints in what area a security break takes place.
– Custom programming that can control lighting, shades or drapes, entertainment sources and appliances. This particular system has six preconfigured ”living modes,” namely Good Night, Normal Day, Day Party, Normal Evening, Evening Party and Romantic Evening.
Activate the last mode, for instance and the lights dim, the shades go down and heart-tugging music starts playing. An owner with other moods in mind can customize.
Programmable switches are another fascinating feature of the system. If you want to turn on kitchen lights from a hall switch, you can use the touch screen to accomplish the change. Some switch plates have as many as nine buttons, allowing a host of alternatives.
– Sophisticated telephone services. The system can be controlled from a touch-tone telephone, so that an owner can call ahead to do anything from turn up the heat to starting the coffee pot.
A special feature of the Electronic Smart House is a package of AT&T and BellSouth systems that makes possible home video teleconferencing. The video telephone works off existing telephone lines using Bell`s Integrated Services Digital Network, liquid crystal display monitors and miniature cameras.
”Initially, users will be professionals and executives, like doctors or lawyers consulting with clients or for medical monitoring,” said Paul Skakum, marketing representative for BellSouth, which installed the system. Present costs would be $30,000 per installation, but he said that prices could decline to as low as $2,000 to $3,000 within a couple of years.
”As it comes into residential use, it will create new applications,” he said. ”When families are separated by a thousand miles, they will buy them so that grandparents can watch their grandchildren grow up.”
The digital network operated through an AT&T home network controller, scheduled to be available for residences in 1992, also allows customers to send two voice calls and a data transmission simultaneously, allowing integration of a family line, a ”teen” line, a home office phone able to communicate with a corporate computer and a fax machine.
Other features include intercom service, customized ringing patterns and a do-not-disturb function that could automatically refer the calls to an answering machine during, for instance, the dinner hour.
The house uses wiring, outlets and a controller developed by the Smart House Limited Partnership, the National Association of Home Builders-backed venture that has been working on the development of an easily installed, nationally available home automation system since 1983.
Smart House wiring uses three bundled cables carrying all power, telephone, video and control/communications signals, replacing the expensive and complex tangles of ”spaghetti” wiring a custom home automation system requires.
The outets, called ”convenience centers,” can deliver telephone, audio/ video and control/communications services as well as power, and contain electronic chips that allow a plugged-in appliance to communicate with a Smart House controller.
(In the Electronic Smart House, McGrath said, there is, in fact, a parallel system of conventional power wiring in use because the Smart House wiring doesn`t yet have Underwriters Laboratories approval. It is expected by April, he said.)
The basic Smart House wiring system will start being made available to the public this spring on an area-by-area basis, and the system controller will be rolled out this fall, according to Smart House President Chuck Gutenson.
Smart House products will be introduced in 150 major markets in the United States and Canada over a 21-month period, and commitments have been made for building 51 demonstration houses. The first demonstration house will be in suburban Baltimore, where an existing test house sponsored by Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. will be used for the purpose beginning in September.
In the same month a demonstration house will open outside Washington, D.C., and the following month one is scheduled for public view in Chesapeake, Va. A Chicago-area Smart House, sponsored by the Chicagoland Housing Foundation, is planned for opening in the spring of 1992.
Gutenson said the ultimate goal is to make Smart House wiring available for existing homes as well as new ones, but that won`t come until at least 1993.
One of the reasons for concentrating on new homes is that consumers can include the cost in their mortgages, ”creating less pain for the buyer,”
said Gutenson. The cost for Smart-wiring a 2,500-square-foot house, including upgraded outlets and the controller, will be about $7,500 above the average price of $2,500 to $3,000 for wiring such a house. Gutenson said that price might come down 25 to 30 percent by the third year of sales.
Another reason that new homes are the immediate focus is, of course, the backing by the National Association of Home Builders. ”It`s a way for builders to differentiate themselves from competition and take sales away from the resale market,” said Brooke Stauffer, manager of codes and standards development for Smart House.
Gutenson said that manufacturers` commitments to make products especially designed for Smart House use have doubled to 24 in the last six months. The products include microchips and electrical components, heating and air conditioning equipment from makers such as Carrier and Lennox Industries, a programmable gas grill from Ducane and stereo equipment from Pioneer Electronics (U.S.A.) Ltd.
