Siemens home applainces have announced that they are to launch a range of applainces that have the ability to work when the electricity supply is at its cheapest rates but, not much more is currently known about this system.
It would appear that many manufacturers are exploring this route of automatically turning machines on or off whenever the price of electricity is at its lowest with Indesit and Electrolux already reported to be exploring this route.
The problem is, what machines will work with which suppliers and networks or protocols? So far there’s been very little information and we suspect that, as usual, all are trying to be “the” system of choice as to date, we haven’t seen a single open source system.
Of course Bosch or Siemens in this instance is pushing the case for it’s own, what looks to be proprietary system, to be implemented and to provide the service for other manufacturers. More than likely this will be at a cost.
A unified system to do this however is a good thing but, in our opinion, it would have to be completely open source to gain widespread traction in the industry.
Even then however you have to convince people to pay the extra to save the energy and, that’s a tough challenge on many fronts. The first hurdle is that people have to be confident that the system is secure and not some form of Orwellian control over their appliances as recent tabloid reports suggested.
But you also have to make the financial case and as Bosch point out in their video, the savings may be billed as being up to 25% (we assume this is the “best case” and less can be expected in real world use) that only equates on modern washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers to a few pence a cycle at best.
If the machines cost hundreds of pounds more than a “normal dumb” appliance then the financial argument just won’t stack up for many people. And, that’s before you factor in any additional maintenance costs.
Naturally, like Samsun, LG and others there’s a app for your iPhone or other smartphones to switch the machines on or off remotely but, that’s about the limit of what you can do. After all, you can’t remotely load or unload the machines or even drop in detergent so functionality of these connected appliances is very limited for the additional cost.
For now we think that this is very likely a niche market.
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