CEO of AIoT chip company XMOS, Mark Lippett is a technology leader with 25 years' experience in start-up, scale-up and blue-chip companies.
getty
Smart home technology promises greater levels of convenience, efficiency and safety in our everyday lives. In many cases, smart home technology doesn’t require the need for interaction — the technology can adapt to our preferences and always be available when we need it. It makes sense that eventually we will be surrounded by devices delivering these values not just in our homes, but in our cars, cities and workplaces.
However, there’s a cost. All this technology consumes energy to operate and frequently operates all the time. It becomes the domestic equivalent of leaving your car with the engine running on the drive overnight because you want it to be warm in the morning.
Putting Energy To The Test
This recognition prompted me to buy a power meter and spend an hour testing the wattage of the smart technologies in my home. My specific interest was in devices that weren’t delivering value at that instant. I measured a Google Home Hub (2W), my network attached storage (14W), my Apple Time Machine (9W), unused active speakers (2.8W), unused computer monitors (4W to 15W), inactive smart plugs (0.5W each, I have 8 plugs), the list goes on. In a short time, I reached about 40W of continuous consumption on things that weren’t being used — things that are, for some reason, waiting in active standby.
But 40W isn’t too bad, right? About $70 a year? The trouble is, it’s not about my utility bill; let’s consider the greater cost.
The greater cost is the compounded energy consumption of these unused smart devices across millions of homes — devices that are delivering no value at the time. Communications and cloud processing energy consumed are also consequences of my devices. For example, I imagine that every Google smart device (many of which listen all the time and perform audio signal processing on raw data transferred to the cloud), is probably consuming at least as much unseen energy in communications and cloud processing as it is in the home.
The National Resource Defence Council demonstrated that my experience is typical. Depending on the vendor, they found that leading smart speakers consume between 1.4W and 3.8W in inactive modes, with their analysis confirming my reading of 2W for my Google Home. The NRDC also discovered that popular streaming devices Google Chromecast Ultra and Roku Ultra had standby power levels of 2.2 and 2.7W. But their most shocking discovery was a TV that leaped from sub 1W in standby to 22.9W when under the control of a smart speaker.
Many technology companies in the value chain are developing products that offer greater efficiency than ever before, and yet our insatiable desire for technology means that we’re still losing the race. We must take a carbon-neutral approach to our smart devices — they can’t plant trees (yet), but they can minimize their own energy footprint and save energy elsewhere. Smart devices can’t be part of the energy consumption problem — they must be part of the solution. To achieve this, a holistic approach is needed.
Power Wise, Energy Foolish
The amount of investment that goes into theoretically power-efficient processors is frequently wasted at the system level. The problem isn’t the energy that these processors consume when they’re active, but that they’re consuming energy when inactive for significant proportions of the day. Why does my Google Home Hub consume 2W when there’s no one in the house, let alone the room, for example? Why does my computer monitor consume 15W when it’s asleep?
There’s usually a superficial answer, typically associated with cost or the user experience — a voice interface that must be always listening for a keyword or a display that we want to activate quickly.
However, it’s surprising how much can be done with very little information. Take human presence detection for example. With presence detection, for instance, I can switch on a smart device that uses a voice interface, I can activate my Google Home, I can adjust the heating, I can switch off active speakers and manage Wi-Fi settings. Even simpler features like time of day or ambient light can be used to optimize our environments with respect to energy consumption.
Our smart devices must be equipped with the capabilities required to deliver this utility. A low energy footprint demands that these devices are able to sense their environment, understand and act — without the costly transfer to and processing of private data in cloud processing resources. This demands a new ecosystem: embedded processors with integration and intelligence, trained models capable of smart decisions and robust and trustworthy management frameworks to keep our technology secure and up-to-date.
As we consider the design of our next generation of consumer, industrial and automotive devices, we must acknowledge that a modest investment in smarter technology now could reap many rewards later. Not only will it help us on our mission to deliver on our companies’ ESG commitments, but it will enable a greater good — helping our customers to optimize energy consumption in their own homes, offices and cars whilst protecting our shared home — the planet we live on.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
