ASHRAE Journal - February 2012 - 76

STANDARDS AND CODES
be offered with virtually no impact on the consumer. Connected refrigerators will come into the home with a builtin deferral of their 500 to 700 W daily defrost function outside of the nation’s traditional peak demand times of day. Every home with any sort of broadband capability (90% of U.S. homes today) will enjoy this benefit regardless of whether their grid is smart or their home has a smart meter. As utilities begin to dynamically communicate with the homes on a daily basis, offering time of use rates, requesting and ﬁnancially rewarding consumer responses to critical peaks by changing their consumption, and as more renewable generation or electric vehicles require more sophisticated demand response— these smart refrigerators will be ready to adapt their performance to these future Figure 3: On the current path of efficiency, there are diminishing returns. requirements. It is expected that utilities, who most beneﬁt from the better The connected dishwasher will notice you selected the hot system management that comes from more the more ubiquitous dry function and explain to you the annual electricity usage and demand response that connected appliances can offer, will be cost that is associated with that choice. In the unhappy event willing to pay for it. Speciﬁcally, utilities are ready to begin to that a snowstorm knocks the power out in your area, your smart shift their existing and long-standing efﬁcient appliance con- home with smart appliances will shorten the outage period. sumer incentives to the new products with the new connected The smart appliances will wait to restart for a sufﬁcient time capabilities. after the utility restores power. Therefore, the utility can ﬂip the “on” switch sooner knowing that the devices in the home Connected Appliance Prize will not surge back into operation immediately and take the Assuming at a future date 100 million U.S. households grid down again. have a connected refrigerator, what would that mean to the In short, connected appliances, gestated through visionary utility grid (and ultimately the consumer since their monthly public policy and clever engineering, but borne of system and bills support the system whether it is efficient [green] or industry necessity, will soon be delivered into the arms of what not [brown]?). At a minimum, the grid would have 50 bil- is hoped will be an adoring consumer. lion W of defrost energy that are no longer required during peak—every day! In a future world of smart appliances on References 1. Reuters. 2009. Smart Grid Good for Big Solar, Wind: U.S. Regulaa smart grid, those same 50 billion W become available to renewable generation sources. The consumer’s home tor. “Demand response, the heart of the smart grid, could account for can indicate to the grid that when you have a renewable a ﬁfth of U.S. electricity,” FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff. 2. Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. 2009. “Smart resource ready, my refrigerator is ready to use that resource Grid White Paper: The Home Appliance Industry’s Principles & Reto defrost itself. quirements for Achieving a Widely Accepted Smart Grid.” A connected dishwasher can communicate that its owner 3. Sastry, et al. 2010. “Use of Residential Smart Appliances for has only speciﬁed that the dishes need to be cleaned and Peak-Load Shifting and Spinning Reserves: Cost/Beneﬁt Analysis.” ready by 6 a.m. even if the dishwasher was loaded at 6 p.m. Paciﬁc Northwest National Laboratory. 4. Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, et al. 2011. “Joint The owner chose to have the cleaning occur at either the Petition to ENERGY STAR to Adopt Joint Stakeholder Agreement as least expensive, or the greenest, energy time of the evening It Relates to Smart Appliances.” or early morning. 5. EPA. 2011. “Residential Refrigerators and Freezers Speciﬁcation The connected refrigerator can tell you if a child has left its Framework Document: Smart Appliance Capability.” door ajar, or that your water ﬁlter is ready to be replaced, and invite you to accept the manufacturer’s reduced price replaceTom Catania is the recently retired vice president of government ment deal. The connected refrigerator will tell your service relations for the Whirlpool Corporation. He was also a vice chairtechnician what is wrong with it and guarantee they arrive with man of the Board of the Association of Home Appliance Manuthe right part, the ﬁrst time. facturers and chairman of its Government Relations Council.
76 ASHRAE Journal ashrae.org February 2012

ASHRAE Journal - February 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal - February 2012