The All-Seeing Orb Says You Are Wasting Electricity
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 07.24.07
The Ambient Orb is, according to Clive Thompson of Wired, "a groovy little ball that changes colour in sync with incoming data- growing more purple, for example as your email box fills up or as the chance of rain increases." Ambient says that "the physical environment becomes an interface to digital information rendered as subtle changes in form, movement, sound, color or light."
Mark Martinez of Southern California Edison couldn't get people to conserve energy when power supplies were tight, no matter what he did, and then applied the power of the orb. Within weeks, Orb users reduced their peak period energy use by 40%. Martinez says "its nonitrusive. It has a relatively benign effect. But when you see your ball flashing red, you notice."
Thompson at Wired thinks that the killer app for the ambient idea is to tie more than electricity use into it but to have it monitor our entire carbon footprint, and broadcast it to the world, stick it on your facebook page, and trigger "what Ambient Devices CEO David Rose calls the sentinel effect: You'd work harder to conserve so you don't look like a jackass in front of your peers."
Imagine if everyone does it. Thompson continues: " The hope is that it could spawn a cascade of conservation. It's fun seeing your personal energy tab go down by kilowatts — but just imagine watching the world's usage plunge by terawatts or petawatts. It would be like a global Prius, with millions worldwide tweaking the Earth for maximum mileage. Now that's fun." ::Wired also see ::Ambient Orb
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Without some idea of what you use, conservation will never be as effective as it needs to be.
The real-time pricing program in Illinois (powersmartpricing.org) just started offering a limited number of these to their participants for the subsidized rate of $35 apiece. I'm looking forward to getting mine!
I could not access powersmartpricing.org
How can I obtain one of these orbs?
how much energy does the orb use when it's monitoring energy consumption? If this were somehow a passive design, that'd be cool.
All-Seeing Orb Says you're wasting money.