nPlug

[Christian Ledermann]

http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2014/inventor/tanuja-ganu/


"If deployed widely, these simple gadgets could help address India’s
energy deficit without requiring expensive infrastructure investments.
“With the amount of data available, there’s a lot we can still do with
the available power,” says Ganu.



--
Best Regards,

Christian Ledermann

London - UK
Mobile : +44 7474997517

<*)))>{

If you save the living environment, the biodiversity that we have left,
you will also automatically save the physical environment, too. But If
you only save the physical environment, you will ultimately lose both.

1) Don’t drive species to extinction

2) Don’t destroy a habitat that species rely on.

3) Don’t change the climate in ways that will result in the above.

}<(((*>

[Izak Burger]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 5:08 PM, Christian Ledermann <christian...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2014/inventor/tanuja-ganu/

Very interesting. This is an area that I am quite interested in for various reasons. The question I've been pondering for a while now: How do you help the average home user to save power?

The closest you get at the moment are these power monitor devices with the current clamp that measures your total use. The new models have a USB connector, and you can connect it to a computer to log your power profile. All these devices cost somewhere between R700 and R2500 though, so your average low-end electricity user on the lifeline tarriff (and there are reasons why this tariff is important, I'll get to that now) simply won't spend that kind of money on a device that doesn't directly save him any money.

The lifeline tariff is important, because of the funding structure. For example, in Cape Town you get 50 units FBE (Free Basic Electricity) and you can buy the rest at a little over R1 per kwh after that, up to 350kwh after which your costs double.

The domestic users get no FBE, buy the first 600kwh at R1.54 per kwh and R1.86 after that.

What CoCT does then is to fund the FBE and subsidise the lifeline users using the domestic tariffs. The various housing developments in progress will require more FBE in future.

The problem however is that the high-end users are reducing consumption, but the low-end users are not.

If you could devise a device that is cheap, and can help a user find ways to reduce his consumption, that is what I'm after :-)