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Intelligent household appliances are intended to make everyday household life easier. The washing machine that adjusts its power and water consumption to the load on the drum. Or the simple oven in the rented apartment, which every tenant can set up more complex – with a subscription.
At the turn of the millennium, the idea of making life and housework easier with electronics was hyped by the “Internet House” in Hünenberg, a “laboratory” in which manufacturers tried out their visions of a “digital household”.
In the house, the Steiner family led a “modern” life and could order groceries with a touchscreen or control the television program by voice control – a “monstrousness” for the time.
Today, networked household appliances are standard and washing machines have long been sending a message to the smartphone when the laundry is done – as Ms. Steiner demonstrated on television with her “Sim Pad”.
Personalized household appliances with «App Stores»
The “Sim-Pad” is a thing of the past, but smartphones have conquered the world and so it is logical that an idea has also found its way into household appliances that the Steiner family could not have thought of in the year 2000: devices are no longer in primarily hardware, but platforms packed with sensors, which we equip with new functions through software.
Cars have already internalized the principle – today they are “smartphones on four wheels”. But even modern washing machines are turning into «smartphones with a drum». The “bare” device can only do the essentials – if you want special functions, you can download them onto the washing machine.
At the manufacturer V-Zug, for example, this is already a reality and a clever business idea: it costs almost 150 Swiss francs if you want to teach your washing machine the “Steam smoothing Plus” function and personalize it in this way.
Save electricity and distribute workload better
The digitization of household appliances not only brings convenience, but also more energy efficiency and better power management. The vision: A device that consumes a lot of electricity, such as a dishwasher, starts automatically when there is too much electricity in the grid or when your own solar roof is very productive. Manufacturers are working on installing the necessary interfaces for such «energy management controls» in their devices.
What is still missing are so-called “smart grids”, clever power networks. These not only deliver electricity, but also detailed information and data, thanks to which the electricity producers and suppliers can see where and when which devices are consuming electricity. This allows them to switch off individual consumers in a more targeted manner – or switch them on deliberately in order to keep the power grid stable and avoid blackouts.
Intelligent networks are possible, but still a dream of the future
The technology is in its infancy, but it will still be a few years before household appliances know when the ideal time to use electricity is. First of all, all households and buildings need a so-called “smart meter”, an electricity meter that not only measures the electricity consumption, but also transmits the consumption to the electricity supplier every quarter of an hour. The strategy of the Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) stipulates that 80 percent of the old electricity meters will be replaced by the end of 2027.