The house that tweets

Smart Homes

Andy Stanford-Clark’s cottage tells him everything from how much power it’s using to whether he has left a window open. But his dream is a nationwide ‘smart grid’ of energy providers and users that will help minimise Britain’s carbon emissions
A greenhouse that remarks on the weather, a glowing sphere that lets you know if you’re using too much electricity and a team of Christmas reindeer that light up when they receive a text message. Ridley Scott’s latest suburban-based epic? No, it's the house that tweets.

Recently, Andy Stanford-Clark, an engineer and master inventor, gave a talk at the British Science Festival describing how he has filled his 16th century thatched cottage with sensors that tell him everything from how much water he’s using to whether he has left a window open.

Around two dozen wireless sensors monitor temperature, electricity and water usage and transmit the information to a central Linux server. The server makes intelligent decisions based on this information to manage devices around the house. The inventor has installed a luminous orb in his study that glows an ominous red when power consumption is at its peak. On a more trivial level, when Stanford-Clark arrives from a hard day’s inventing the server can make sure the garden fountain is turned on to greet him, it can even make sure the towels are warm ready for his post-workout shower. If it senses him enter the house (by recognising the mobile phone in his pocket) a screen greets him on his arrival.

Most of the technology, however, is aimed at reducing power consumption. Every piece of equipment in the network has been chosen because of its high level of efficiency, and last year Stanford-Clark gave the central hub the ability to update him on the house’s power and water usage wherever he is in the world, via Twitter.
The various “tweetjects” installed in the thatched cottage chirp away every time £5 of electricity has been used. They keep track of the volume of water used and squawk about that too. As a result, the family are much more aware of the consequences of leaving on energy-hungry appliances and have begun to manage their power usage much more effectively, enabling them to reduce the household’s electricity bill by around a third. All this is just the beginning, Stanford-Clark told the festival audience. He envisages a nationwide “smart grid” of semi-aware devices, from the fridges in our kitchens to wind turbines on remote hills.

He claims that connecting every step of the energy chain, from production to consumption, will enable us to use energy much more effectively. Presently, huge spikes in usage (the end of Eastenders kettle rush is a classic example) take a massive toll on the energy grid.  A smart-grid that can monitor and manage how we use power could provide extra capacity at short notice (by turning off fridges or even “borrowing” the charge in our electric cars) to boil the nation’s post soap opera cup of tea. Not only would this be cheaper for the end user, it would also take far less fossil fuel to generate the same amount of electricity.