Whirlpool wants to pull plug on 'dumb' appliances
Appliance manufacturer Whirlpool has received $19.3 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding as part of its Smart Grid Investment Grant program, the company announced Thursday.
Whirlpool, which markets appliances under the brand names Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, and Bauknecht, joins General Electric in what seems to be a quest for designing the most well-behaved appliances.
The Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer is part of the company's 2009 line of eco-efficient laundry appliances. With Department of Energy funds, it plans to have a million smart-grid-compliant dryers ready for sale by 2011.
(Credit: Whirlpool)Similar to GE's smart-appliance ambitions, Whirlpool plans to develop home appliances that can connect and communicate with municipal smart grids. The machines will be able to receive signals from a smart grid, letting it know of off-peak hours, a good time to turn on and run.
Whirlpool, which will get its funding over a two-year period, plans to match the funds in order to have a million smart-grid-compatible dryers available for public purchase by 2011. The smart dryers will be manufactured in the United States, and the company estimates that the dryers could save consumers $20 to $40 per year in energy savings.
In addition to the smart dryers, Whirlpool has pledged that by 2015, it will discontinue making appliances sans the ability to communicate with smart grids. It will no longer make "dumb" appliances at all.
That promise, however, is dependent on a few things happening.
"This commitment is dependent on two important public-private partnerships: the development by the end of 2010 of an open, global standard for transmitting signals to, and receiving signals from, a home appliance; and appropriate policies that reward consumers, manufacturers, and utilities for using and adding these new peak-demand reduction capabilities," Whirlpool said in a statement.
Whirlpool's announcement follows President Obama's release this week of plans to overhaul the country's electrical grid to turn it into a smart-grid system. An estimated $8.1 billion is planned to be spent on 100 smart-grid projects in 49 states. Utilities themselves will kick in $4.7 billion, while the remaining $3.4 billion will come from the U.S. government as stimulus money.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
The more crap you toss into one (e.g. the "smart" components), the less likely the appliance will last as long. Not because anything has deteriorated quality-wise, but because electronics components tend to have a shorter MTBF as you shrink them, make them overly complex, and burden them with crap that most folks probably won't use.
Take stoves. I buy a new one last year, to replace a ~1978 electric stove that was simply too small for what the missus cooks in/on it (but otherwise worked just fine). The new electric stove needed repair after 11 months - turns out that the "simmer select" control circuitry goes out (the first time she used it, no less), wiping out any hope of using one of the burners. 3 more weeks and the warranty would've expired, and left us with a big, fat repair bill.
Now, I'm supposed to expect this thing to last 10 years, let alone the 30+ years that the last one has been working for?
Two different companies (including one run by a family friend) found the SAME EXACT PROBLEMS with the old stove, and told us that it needed replaced immediately.
A counter example is cars. They have ever more electronics in them to manage emissions, burn efficiency, airbags, ABS and so on but you're still going to expect that they won't have any fault before you've had them for about five years and some manufacturers are even slapping seven year warranties on them (as does Kia). As if to be perfectly in line with this my five year old car needs to be taken in because there's a problem with the ABS but it hasn't had a single problem until just now.
What they and the President with his $Billions in incentives is missing is the lack of programmable tools the end user can deploy to monitor/manage and control the end appliances both from the home itself as well as access these devices and manage them remotely.
A Smart Meter does not control anything in the home.
Check out what a Company like In2 Networks is doing with programmable Internet Comm Modules connected to such items as the Thermostat/Lighting/Security Alarms and other Home Automation devices the customer can use to effectively manage these appliances.
Jim A.
That said, I worked for a while at Pacific Northwest Labs (Battelle). One of the ideas going around at the time (2002) was a simple card that could go in any appliance. It monitored the the frequency of incoming power, which if less than 60 Hz would indicate that the grid was heavily loaded, and would inhibit or delay the starting of the appliance. In the case of water heaters, laundry equipment, and the like, a SHORT delay would typically not be a problem (oftentimes not even noticeable).
On the other hand, unless there were a display to indicate that the appliance was holding off, the homeowner might think his/her appliance was malfunctioning. Another problem is precisely what you mention: a whole bunch of delayed appliances start up all at once, browning out the grid. I suppose some random delays could be programmed in to counteract this (or even real-time auctions for buying more expensive power when the grid is highly loaded.)
That particular idea was stand-alone for all consumers, not under outside control. In any event, I think it should be possible for the homeowner to override any inhibited starts. After all, one might need that load of clothes to be dried right away.
the oven "locks" - most of their brands - the closest cause is some issue with the oven probe.
then spontaneously the oven starts to wotk.
for the microwave unplugging for random hours and having the clock set to function gets it functioning for about 6 months.
their smart products would be a consumer disaster.
What will also happen is that it will return to the old Ma Bell days where you are charged by time of day for use of electricy - and if you happen to use it between 7 AM and 6 PM you will be charged a WHOLE LOT MORE in order to give that return to them and to cover for the lower rates they will set for the evening and nighttime - just like what the telephone system was like 40+ years ago. Everyone will end up paying more and if people conserve and the put off building new power plants for 3 to 10 years because of it - when demand far outstrips supply the rates will go up even more and it will spiral out of control for 10 to 15 years till the supply catches up.
Tom Philo
http://www.taphilo.com
My main beef with any of this is that Whirlpool makes products with clocks. Dumb clocks! I have a battery operated Weather Station ($45.00) that knows the EXACT time, all the time, without me setting it, but a Whirlpool oven or microwave needs to be reset evry time there is a power dip or brownout.
Now these are the same people who are going to make a drier that makes me cater to when it decides to dry my clothes. All for a $20 to $40 savings per year? And HOW MUCH MORE is this super drier going to cost? What a bunch of horse manure.
- by akita96th November 24, 2009 7:42 PM PST
- Give me a washing machine and dryer that has a" on and off "button not led touch screen and also give me a turn switch that says high medium low and 3 water settings hot cold warm and that will be the one I buy because I know it will last longer and have fewer problems and when the time comes for a service tech to fix it it will not cost me an arm and leg . These new machines look cool and im sure they work fine but all the extra settings on computer generated gui controlers are over kill just to wash and dry...I dont want to to take 3 hours to read and try to understand just how to cut it on...
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