Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Smarter Power Bricks (wall warts)

Earth2Tech has a feature on the company Green Plug, a company advocating and selling a system for making smarter, interchangeable wall chargers. As anyone who has purchased a cell phone in the last few years can probably identify, “Why is it every time I get new phone…the old power supply
doesn’t work? Why do I have to throw away perfectly working
cables?” says Paul Panepinto, Green Plug Senior VP.

The solution and technology that Green Plug is advocating is a free protocol for devices to communicate their power needs which will then communicate with a chip that can be embedded in the power supplies of devices to ensure that the power supply only provides the power the device needs when the device needs it. Green Plugs vision would be for their power supplies to be universal, such that when you purchase a new device, it wouldn't need to include a power supply, as the previous supply would still work. And thinking further, for rechargeable devices, not every one of them would need a power supply, as they might not all need to be charged simultaneously.

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