BY WILLIAM JANHONEN, LEED AP, NAHB-CGP
At the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, General Electric Corporation in partnership with Walt Disney created a wonderful glimpse of the history and future of electricity in their pavilion called “Progressland.” Separate auditoriums, each holding 250 people, circled stages to watch life-sized 3-D audio-animatronic people act out the story of electricity in the home from the 1890s to the present. The show began in a late 19th-century home where people struggled with the latest luxuries; telephone, gas lamps, gramophone (record player), kitchen pump, a hand-cranked clothes washer and a hand-pumped, air suction vacuum cleaner. On the next stage was the home of the 1920s, with coffeemakers, sewing machines, a refrigerator and a homemade cooling device for hot weather – an electric fan that circulated air over a block of ice. The 1940s were recalled with a small round television screen, plus some odd applications of electricity – a housewife mixing wallpaper paste with a cake mixer. Finally the glories of today (1964) glittered in a living room at Christmastime – it was a home that had a kitchen with many amenities and all electric.
When I think of the advances we have made in controlling our environment, I wonder what an attendee of the 1964 World’s Fair would have thought if they could see some of the controls Lutron offers to homeowners today. Lutron Electronics Company, Inc. has created a complete home control system that can adjust the amount of daylight and electric light, the temperature, and the power used by appliances in a room, or throughout your home. You can control shades, lights, heating or cooling and appliances – all from wall-mounted, handheld or tabletop controls – or the really cool part, even from wireless devices outside your home.
If you consider the dimming controls, occupancy sensors, temperature scheduling and peak load demand control (load shedding), you can easily see how energy savings become part of the basic control package. One of my favorite components of the system is a device that you can attach to appliances that keep using energy even when they are turned off (e.g., your flat-screen TV), and they eliminate what we call the “vampire draw,” eliminating all power to the device.
The home control system even has two-way communications to let you know if you left lights on, a shade open or what the temperature is in a room, even when you can’t see the area. You can turn on lights before you get home and set up pathways to light your entry through the house to increase safety.
You can hit the “Green” button to save energy by dimming the lights, adjusting the thermostat, shutting off standby power to electronic appliances, and closing the shades to block solar heat gain in summer or insulate the windows in winter.
Two very cool devices that deserve mentioning are battery-controlled temperature sensors and light dimmers. Using battery-controlled sensors allows you to place them where needed in order to provide the most beneficial temperature control without wiring. Most people think using a dimmer does not provide any energy savings, but they are incorrect. By dimming lights, you actually reduce the amount of electricity used in your home. With a standard light switch, you turn on/off the current and you get all or nothing. The combination of these two simple devices allows you to set the exact comfort level with the control of the lighting to a mood or to enhance a décor while saving energy.
My first thought when I went through the Lutron display at the 2009 International Business Show in Las Vegas was to flashback to those old spy movies like every James Bond movie or even Austin Powers, where one touch of a button can call up lights and music or change a bedroom into a man cave. After the demonstration I was amazed at the selectivity and personal control that can be programmed into a single hand-held device. My two favorites in all of the controls: a goodnight button that turns off all the lights in the entire house from the comfort of your bed, and the bathroom control that lets you increase the heat before you have to enter in the morning and get out of that same warm bed. Yes, it is possible to have paradise at home.
