Effort to Establish Open, Green Standard for Universal Power Gains Momentum

A San Ramon, California-based group that aims to spread more efficient power-charging systems announced this month that industry momentum is building for an open, green standard for universal power.

 

Officials at Green Plug, a private organization, say companies such as Ricoh, SimpleTech, Pacific Gas & Electric and the Natural Resources Defense Council are among those joining their ranks – and that they’ve built a Web tool to capture words of support.

 

The initiative complements the ongoing, consumer-driven “I Want My Green Plug” campaign, according to the group.

 

“Beyond the ability to vote for CE devices to ‘Green Plug (News - Alert)-enable,’ the (tool) includes social tools for sharing with friends, embedding a widget on a blog or Web site, bookmarking it on social sites, joining IWMGP groups on social networks, and following the Green Plug blog for updates,” Green Plug officials say.

 

Officials at Green Plug say theirs is first green technology company to apply two-way digital communication to convert a universal power source to a device’s specific power requirements.

 

“Stylish DC power hubs enabled with Green Plug’s Greentalk digital protocol are able to simultaneously power multiple devices, each with its own specific voltage and power requirements,” they say. “Green Plug technology minimizes e-waste by enabling consumers to keep their chargers for use with future devices after their current devices have become obsolete.”

 

As TMCnet reported this week, another California company took a step toward eco-friendly power usage with its so-called “plug computing” initiative.

 

Officials at Santa Clara-based Marvell – a storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions provider – say their “SheevaPlug” supports high-performance, lower-power, small computers for managing and storing digital media assets.

 

Small enough to plug into a wall socket, a plug computer is designed to draw so little power that it can always be left on – and, Marvell (News - Alert) officials say, unlike other embedded devices in the home, it contains a gigahertz-class processor to offer PC class performance.

 

Basically, a plug computer is a small, powerful computer that connects to an existing network using Gigabit Ethernet. The device eliminates the need for an always-on PC in the digital home to access services such as media servers, file sharing and backup software, which need to be installed on a PC.

 

Importantly, officials at Marvell say that they’ve created an open computing platform for developers in a consumer and eco-friendly form factor.

 

In an interview with TMCnet, Marvell’s product manager, Raja Mukhopadhyay, said the company is seeking to speed up the development and availability of innovative software and services in the home.

 

“Essentially what Marvell has done is take the computer in the home and present it in a standalone, separate manner in one device,” Mukhopadhyay told TMCnet. “It’s going to help high-level application players come and take something directly to market. People will not be beholden to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) anymore.”

 

The plug computer is also eco-friendly. It can be left plugged into a wall socket at all times, and uses low power to conserve energy and draws on average, less than five watts under normal operation compared to 25 to 100 watts for a PC being used as a home server.

 

It’s a philosophy that likely would please Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

 

Speaking of Green Plug’s initiative, Horowitz asked people to imagine a world where they only need a couple of external power supplies to charge all the portable electronic devices in a home.

 

“The Alliance for Universal Power Supplies is working to make this dream a reality,” Horowitz said. “We at the NRDC are fully supportive of efforts that will ensure that new external power supplies are energy efficient and can be used to charge multiple devices. The time for a universal ‘plug and play’ charger is now.”