Last Friday the first TEDx in the Netherlands took place at the Royal Tropical Insitute in Amsterdam. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience, where x=independently organized TED event. 450 People attended the event and there was a live stream wich ran smoothly owing to my fiber connection at home. There were inspiring talks, impassionated speakers, and some technical demonstrations.
One I liked was about Wattcher, a device that displays your energy consumption at home.
"Wattcher consists of a sensor, a sending unit and a display. The sensor can be placed on any electricity meter (analog meters with a turning wheel, digital meters with LED pulse, and smart meters). The sensor is connected to the sending unit. Both are placed in the meter closet. The sending unit sends a radio signal to the display unit, which can be placed in any (euro standard) electricity socket. The Wattcher can be selfinstalled by the consumer.
Wattcher shows:
• current power consumption (in Watts): how much energy you're using at this moment.
• daily consumption (in kiloWattday): your total electricity consumption in the last 24 hours.
• target consumption (in %): daily consumption compared with your own target. Are you really saving energy?
The
Wattcher uses very little energy. The combined consumption of all
Wattcher components (sensor, sending unit and display) is less than 1
Watt."
I strongly believe in visualisation to save energy. It makes you aware of high consumption of several devices at home. If you're aware of it maybe you're inclined to use them less often, or turn them off earlier than you used to do. It can also provide a nice challenge to cut down on you consumption for the competitive people amongst us...
All the TEDx talks are available in video on the website. One of my favorites (if you are interested in architecture) was the enjoyable talk from Bjarke Ingels.
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