Every Watt Matters

The Problem

Ever since the invention of electric power by Serbian-American inventor Tesla Nikola, electric power has been very critical for survival of human beings. Whether the source of the electric power supply is renewable or nonrenewable, you often hear the concept on the awareness of conservation of electric power or electric power saving and researches that could save electric power consumption. One of the places where electric power is wasted is at household level activities like overcharging your devices of any kind. Householders waste £134million a year overcharging gadgets such as mobile phones and laptop computers, according to a study in the UK. One in five Britons leave their devices plugged in once the battery is full because they are scared of running out of power when they leave the house. But one in ten admit they are simply ‘too lazy’ to pull the plug even though it costs them money. Overcharging batteries reduces their lifespan and increases household electricity bills by an average £60 per year. So what we need is a mechanism where we change the behavior of end users without compromising their comfort.

Our Proposal

This project is about building a smart plug-in divider that can unplug a socket when a charging device is full that will lead to a behavioral change for end users saving electric power. This can be done in two ways. The first method is by using a programmable timer integrated with circuit breaking mechanism that will stop flow of electric circuit after charging the device in some specific period of time t. Meaning, when we charge our phones or some other device we know from experience the time it takes to make our device charge full irrespective of the charge level it is in when it is plugged. When we plug in the charger socket in to the new smart divider, we also adjust the timer based on our estimation of time. Then the smart divider will break the circuit that goes from power to the charging cable in the time we set. This will save electric power wastage and change our behavior in to power conservation habit. The second method is by using a programmable timer integrated with a spring load that can push the socket out after the device have charged for some period of time t we set on the programmable timer. This also saves overcharging because electric flow does not stop whether a charging device is full or not. Reputation of using this product will lead to behavioral change on conservation of electric power on other ordinary power outlets.

We Assume that...

I am assuming that the power consumption to run the system will not nearly match the electric power it will save on use.

Constraints to Overcome

According to measurements from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the average cell phone draws 3.68 watts of power from the outlet while it’s charging and 2.24 watts when charged. Let’s take the worst-case scenario and assume that you’re over-juicing a charged battery for the entire night. Leave the average phone plugged in for eight unnecessary hours, and it’ll use about 0.018 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Do that every night for a week, and the figure rises to 0.13 kWh; every night for a year, and you’re looking at a grand total of 6.5 kWh of electricity. This electric bill is unnecessary cost for you and it is waste of electric power that could be used to convert it in to profit. This project will save all theses saving you cost and possibly save your equipment life span.

Current Work

My primary work tasks and activities over the next 3-6 months will be building a quality prototype and demonstrate it to clients.

Current Needs

I need funding.