By REBECCA SMITH
"Smart" appliances could be coming to a laundry room or kitchen near you.
General Electric Co. says it will introduce its first smart water heaters in November. It also says it has created a smart version of each of its other appliance lines and is ready to put them to work in utility-company demonstration projects.
Whirlpool Corp. plans to announce Monday that it will produce one million smart clothes dryers for sale in 2011. It had previously committed to having smart products available by 2015.
Smart appliances can be controlled remotely by a power company to go into energy-saving mode or shut off during times when there is high demand for electricity. Consumers could override the feature but likely will pay more for power during these periods.
Over time, wide use of smart appliances could save consumers money and cut the number of power plants needed to satisfy electricity demand, reducing power-industry pollution. The appliances aren't expected to be priced much higher than regular EnergyStar products.
For appliance makers -- which have been suffering from the housing bust -- smart products could be a sales opportunity. A record number of large appliances -- 47 million -- were sold in 2005, but sales have declined since then, sagging to 39.7 million in 2008. So far this year, sales are down 14%, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.
Smart appliances could offer consumers a reason to replace appliances sooner. "What's been missing from the smart grid is the 'killer app' that offers real benefits to consumers," said Joseph McGuire, president of the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. "We think we're ready to provide that."
The surge in consumer-product development comes as the federal government is getting close to adopting "smart grid" standards for the nation's electric-power network.
In a 90-page document released for public comment last week, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology identified 80 standards intended to permit seamless integration of everything from big pieces of equipment mounted on utility poles to electric cars to small home appliances.
Reducing fossil-fuel use and cutting greenhouse gases is a top priority of President Obama. His administration and the nation's utilities and equipment vendors have been moving with unusual speed to get smart-grid standards in place by early next year.
There are still unknowns. It's not clear whether smart devices for the home will communicate mostly wirelessly or through home wiring. (The standards proposed Thursday would permit either.) Also unclear is who will dominate the race to develop the most popular central controllers -- big technology vendors like Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp., meter makers, appliance makers or others.
The imminence of smart-grid standards is expected to give manufacturers more confidence that the smart products they develop will be able to talk to each other and to central control units without difficulty. In the past, competing approaches -- think Betamax vs. VHS -- have slowed the development and adoption of new products.
"We now have a conceptual model for the smart grid, and the barriers are falling," said George Arnold, national coordinator for smart grid interoperability at NIST.
Smart appliances will come equipped with communications modules and software. During grid emergencies or periods of high electricity use, utilities could ping smart meters or other devices, such as home-network controllers, to order appliances to hunker down in energy-saving mode.
Whirlpool's smart dryers, which will account for a quarter of the company's expected 2011 production, will be able to operate in a variety of modes. In one energy-saving mode that might be used when electricity demand is high, the heat will turn on and off during an extended drying cycle but the spinning will continue to prevent wrinkles.
An electric dryer that tumbles clothes without heat uses only about 200 watts of electricity, while one that's set on maximum heat may use as much as 500 watts. Multiply that by one million dryers and the difference is equivalent, at a moment in time, to the output of half-a-dozen big coal-fired power plants.
GE's first smart-grid-enabled product is a hybrid water heater that will be able to take instructions from a smart meter or other control device. A GE spokeswoman said the heaters will cost about $1,500, more than conventional models, but they will be 62% more energy efficient. A built-in heat pump will recycle heat from room air and use it to help heat the water.
But GE doesn't intend to put most of its new smart products in stores until there is enough demand. That, in turn, requires a rate structure from power companies that varies pricing during the day depending on the level of demand.
"They'd only be beneficial where there's tiered pricing," providing incentives to run equipment when prices are lowest, said GE spokeswoman Kim Freeman. "That's where they become important."
Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com
"Smart" appliances could be coming to a laundry room or kitchen near you.
General Electric Co. says it will introduce its first smart water heaters in November. It also says it has created a smart version of each of its other appliance lines and is ready to put them to work in utility-company demonstration projects.
Whirlpool Corp. plans to announce Monday that it will produce one million smart clothes dryers for sale in 2011. It had previously committed to having smart products available by 2015.
Smart appliances can be controlled remotely by a power company to go into energy-saving mode or shut off during times when there is high demand for electricity. Consumers could override the feature but likely will pay more for power during these periods.
Over time, wide use of smart appliances could save consumers money and cut the number of power plants needed to satisfy electricity demand, reducing power-industry pollution. The appliances aren't expected to be priced much higher than regular EnergyStar products.
For appliance makers -- which have been suffering from the housing bust -- smart products could be a sales opportunity. A record number of large appliances -- 47 million -- were sold in 2005, but sales have declined since then, sagging to 39.7 million in 2008. So far this year, sales are down 14%, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.
Smart appliances could offer consumers a reason to replace appliances sooner. "What's been missing from the smart grid is the 'killer app' that offers real benefits to consumers," said Joseph McGuire, president of the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. "We think we're ready to provide that."
The surge in consumer-product development comes as the federal government is getting close to adopting "smart grid" standards for the nation's electric-power network.
In a 90-page document released for public comment last week, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology identified 80 standards intended to permit seamless integration of everything from big pieces of equipment mounted on utility poles to electric cars to small home appliances.
Reducing fossil-fuel use and cutting greenhouse gases is a top priority of President Obama. His administration and the nation's utilities and equipment vendors have been moving with unusual speed to get smart-grid standards in place by early next year.
There are still unknowns. It's not clear whether smart devices for the home will communicate mostly wirelessly or through home wiring. (The standards proposed Thursday would permit either.) Also unclear is who will dominate the race to develop the most popular central controllers -- big technology vendors like Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp., meter makers, appliance makers or others.
The imminence of smart-grid standards is expected to give manufacturers more confidence that the smart products they develop will be able to talk to each other and to central control units without difficulty. In the past, competing approaches -- think Betamax vs. VHS -- have slowed the development and adoption of new products.
"We now have a conceptual model for the smart grid, and the barriers are falling," said George Arnold, national coordinator for smart grid interoperability at NIST.
Smart appliances will come equipped with communications modules and software. During grid emergencies or periods of high electricity use, utilities could ping smart meters or other devices, such as home-network controllers, to order appliances to hunker down in energy-saving mode.
Whirlpool's smart dryers, which will account for a quarter of the company's expected 2011 production, will be able to operate in a variety of modes. In one energy-saving mode that might be used when electricity demand is high, the heat will turn on and off during an extended drying cycle but the spinning will continue to prevent wrinkles.
An electric dryer that tumbles clothes without heat uses only about 200 watts of electricity, while one that's set on maximum heat may use as much as 500 watts. Multiply that by one million dryers and the difference is equivalent, at a moment in time, to the output of half-a-dozen big coal-fired power plants.
GE's first smart-grid-enabled product is a hybrid water heater that will be able to take instructions from a smart meter or other control device. A GE spokeswoman said the heaters will cost about $1,500, more than conventional models, but they will be 62% more energy efficient. A built-in heat pump will recycle heat from room air and use it to help heat the water.
But GE doesn't intend to put most of its new smart products in stores until there is enough demand. That, in turn, requires a rate structure from power companies that varies pricing during the day depending on the level of demand.
"They'd only be beneficial where there's tiered pricing," providing incentives to run equipment when prices are lowest, said GE spokeswoman Kim Freeman. "That's where they become important."
Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com
Posts
