If that socket can be designed to show a green light when receiving green electricity, it could also be programmed to disconnect the power when any of the awful red stuff came through. Sounds like a good idea. It would at least take the pressure off the rest of us at periods of high demand, and make the greenies to live up to the consequences of their aspirations.
Don't you just use the smart meter to do that?
Probably, but there'd be something intrinsically satisfying to learn that the greenies who are inflicting renewables on us are having to face up to and suffer the consequences of their actions!
Why ever would anyone "invent" an "energy saving" device that didn't have a switch on each outlet. Stupidest idea ever.
It is usually because they expect to control the appliance remotely, and the switch would override the remote control. If you pressed 'on' in the app / dashboard / code / whatever you would expect the thing to come on, which it wouldn't if somebody had hard switched it off. While hard switching would 'save energy' it would also defeat the point of the IoT device which is to control devices (more) centrally - ie turn them on at the right time, not just turn them off.
You can have soft buttons to request on/off to the IoT platform, but they are often better mounted somewhere other than on the socket.
Theo
how do you colour the electrons?
I guess they've gone out of favour because modern computers don't draw enough current to trigger the smart switch. My wife's got one, and her screen sometimes goes blank because the switch decides to turn off all the peripherals when the computer is lightly loaded. I've had to wire a switchable table lamp in parallel with the computer so that she can generate a bit more load in order to get the peripherals back. Rather defeats the object.
All the peripherals on *my* computer are on a manually switched extension lead to avoid that sort of problem.
Ah, I must have missed that bit. Thanks Theo.
Cheers - Pete
I had a lot of trouble buying a new on when my last failed.
Jonathan
That's how I do it too, after similar experience with a smart switch. Suitably daisy chained spreaders so that one switch takes out all the monitors, printers, scanners, audio, switches, etc. Just leaves power to the desktop box, desk light, and WiFi extender (because that services other rooms). Currently, I only print from inside the office.
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