FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

The Home of the Future Will Save the Planet and Drive You Insane

Step inside the cutting edge smart house that tracks every drop of your energy use—if the constant updates don't push you to the brink, it just might save the world.

Even when she’s out, Kathy Sokolic can tell when her husband gets home, or leaves. The light switches leave a trail. Every time he turns on the TV, tops off the battery in their Nissan Leaf, or cooks a pizza—she knows.

“Sometimes he’ll be home and I’ll be like, ‘did you use the oven?’” she says. “My poor husband Mike, I get to track him and his energy consumption.”

Sokolic and her husband Mike Sears live in what many might call the home of the future. It’s a little slice of eco-friendly, urban planning, residential Shangri-La. They love it. And it's enough to drive you crazy.

Advertisement

They explain how neurotic life can get in a home that tracks your every energy move in the latest New Tech City, a podcast I produce for WNYC. Listen here:

The couple are guinea pigs in an initiative called the Pecan Street Smart Grid Demonstration Project. About 700 homes are wired up like they’re connected to the power grid we wished America could have already. Every socket and every switch in their Austin home captures all the power usage minute-by-minute and sends it off to a massive database—all anonymized—so that researchers can figure out what the future of our real power grid should look like.

If ten people on a street all get electric cars, how much extra power will that pull? If everyone in a neighborhood has solar panels on their roof, then what kind of batteries will they need, or what will upkeep cost of the power lines? These are things the utility companies need to know.

For example, the project revealed that solar panels on homes are better put to use facing west, not south. They get a little less energy aimed at the setting sun, but the extra juice flows in when the people are actually home to use it, which is more efficient than storing it or sending it out into the grid.

And it’s not hard to stop people from plugging in their electric cars when they get home right during peak evening power demand—all you need to do is offer a timer and a discount to charge at 2 AM.

Advertisement

One lesson: Using power more efficiently, needs to be easy and preferably auto-configured.

“The things that are paradigm shifting are typically not obvious and they don’t require a lot of hands on technology use,” says Brewster McCracken, head of the nonprofit Pecan Street Project and former mayoral candidate. It matters when people charge their electric car to prevent fluctuations on the power grid. But the solution isn’t an ad campaign, it’s an auto timer. “Any product that requires people to make a lot of decisions runs the risk of the old flashing VCR syndrome.”

“Having a more efficient air conditioning system and better rooftop insulation has a far greater impact than trying to adjust people’s behavior,” he says after looking at millions and millions of data points.

And, eventually, the residents of this kind of house might even learn how not to be neurotic about all the data they get about themselves and their families.

“You have to kind of get over that mentality. And live your life,” Sokolic says. “You want to make sacrifices and do the best you can for energy use. But you have a standard of living you want to uphold."

New Tech City is a weekly show and podcast that explores the myriad ways that technology is invading, enhancing, and impacting our daily lives. Subscribe here.