Wouldn't it be great if your cellphone, laptop, camera, printer and MP3 player all used the same electrical power adapter, instead of a separate "wall wart" for each gadget?
It's not hard to imagine how the adapter would work. A USB cable would be sufficient to carry both power and data between a power supply and multiple devices. Each gadget, when connected via USB to the power supply, could transmit its power needs over the cable to a one-size-fits-all power adapter, which would then deliver the correct voltage back through the same cable. Should you find yourself on a trip without your power supply, you wouldn't need to go on a hunt for the correct model, nor would you need to pay fifty dollars for it at a cellphone store. There'd only be one type that worked with all portable gear. Any convenience store could stock them.
There's an obvious greentech angle, too: Smart adapters would be able to turn off the "phantom power" that an unintelligent adapter continues to deliver to a fully-charged phone ovenight. When you throw out your phone for a new one, you could keep the adapter rather than adding it to the local landfill and buying a different one for your new model.
Yet consumer electronics manufacturers, usually quick to adopt standards that make their devices interoperable, have balked at switching to a universal power supply. Green Plug, a startup that makes components for a USB-based single power source system, drew a favorable response from readers when the Standard wrote about the technology last summer.
But gadget makers seem to have no compelling financial incentive to adopt Green Plug's technology. It would require them to add Green Plug's chip, or similar hardware and software, into every phone, camera, or music player they build, making them more expensive and more complicated to build.
Another stumbling block for manufacturers: A universal power supply would kill the market for replacement power supplies. Manufacturers sell these at a steep markup price to customers who lose or break the original one that came with the device, and aren't tech-savvy enough to procure a low-cost generic replacement.
Green Plug CEO Frank Paniagua, who twenty years ago helped develop and market the VESA standards that enabled PCs and monitors from different manufacturers to work together, complained to CNN last year that none of the big consumer electronics companies wanted to be first to switch to a universal adapter. Westinghouse is the only major manufacturer to adopt the technology so far.
Green Plug is now trying to drum up public outcry through a website, iwantmygreenplug.com. The site asks consumers to list the brand names of devices they own for which they would like a universal power adapter, and to write short testimonials in favor of the tech. Green Plug's publicist has emailed some of the best quotes to reporters:
- “This is something I've been wanting for ages. Whatever products support this idea will influence my purchasing decision.”
- "We've had standard AC plugs for 100 years... why is this taking so long?”
- “We humans are making way too much stuff. Some of it is necessary, or at least we think so. Incompatible AC adapters are not necessary.”
The bad news? So far, the site has collected only 4,443 votes, mine included.
Comments
A CEO is complaining that his proprietary systems is not being accepted as a "standard" without submitting the device schematics to a reputable standard organization and you support him.
Do you not see the obvious errors of logic in 1) his complaints and 2) your support?
If Green Plug had released the chip schematics to a standards organization and allowed that any member of that standards organization could then produce the chip without royalties... then I would be willing to say the Green plug is attempting to better the world.
As it stand Green Plug is trying to get you to be their public advocate because you don't seem to be aware that the manufacturers cost is not in the protocol it's in the chip!
I don't think this can happen. There are actually economic disincentives for those in control of the manufacturers to adopt a standard like this. I applaud the altruism here, but it fails to "incentivize" the standardization for the manufacturers. Manufacturers - those in control of mass production - are not so much intent on realizing the full collective efficiency and savings of mass production as they are in twisting the whole process to benefit them and slightly disadvantage those who buy their product. They waste resources and labor on unnecessarily frequent redesign cycles and impose planned obsolescence and proprietary schemes, all in the name of disproportionate profit. The end result is a waste and perversion of the collective potential of mass production.
What Green Plug proposes makes PERFECT sense from an altruistic, socialistic, Big Picture perspective... which also means it makes absolutely NO sense to these corporate CEOs because they expend NO mental energy on such unimportant things.
Having said that, I'd like to point out that one company has produced a power supply design that in some ways is actually BETTER than the Green Plug standard: Kensington. Yes, that Kensington. They have a series of true variable-output DC power supplies which have a rather unique way of powering a wide range of different devices that require different voltages and current; I have one myself, a model K33197. It has a five-pin DC output jack, to which a cable attaches that has a female plug on the other end; there is a series of "tips" which connect to the end of the cable, and it is these tips which actually determine both the physical attachment method to a device AND the voltage and current. There are tips available for virtually every laptop, cellphones, even one for my old HP iPAQ hx4700 (which is a REALLY weird one). I actually have "last year's" model that uses a rather proprietary cable, but apparently the most recent model, K33197US, uses a standard USB cable in the design, which is even better and more standardized.
I believe the Kensington design works by the tips creating a feedback loop of some sort with the power supply proper, communicating through one or several of those pins precisely what voltage and current to supply. It strikes me as quite ingenious. I have no idea what specific mechanism this feedback loop employs, because I haven't yet reverse-engineered one of the tips to see what makes it tick.
So what Kensington has produced is a 3-24VDC, 6A, 120W variable output DC power supply that, with a proper tip, can power virtually any device that falls within its output specs. They have already anticipated the vast majority of common devices, and can easily produce others as the need arises. Of course I'd rather see the whole thing open sourced, but that again is the difference between altruism and harsh Darwinian reality. Regardless, I think what Kensington has created could very easily become a standard even superior to what Green Plug proposes. Green Plug might seriously consider having a discussion with Kensington about it, and see if some mutual and collective benefit can be achieved.
By the way, In case it wasn't obvious in my description, the major advantage that the Kensington design has over what Green Plug proposes is that the Kensington model REQUIRES NO MODIFICATION TO THE DEVICES: all the custom engineering, as it were, is in the tips that interface with devices. This eliminates the biggest single barrier to adoption. The device manufacturers don't have to do a thing for the Kensington paradigm to be adopted by consumers, though I'm sure they would fight it if it became a "movement", because it might still cut into their ability to craft over-priced proprietary lock-in solutions.
We are glad to see such passion around universal power. In the few days since this posting was written we've received over 3,000 new votes on http://www.iwantmygreenplug.com/ and hundreds of new supportive comments http://www.iwantmygreenplug.com/comments.php Many excellent points have been raised here and we hope you find these additional comments beneficial.
Why is it that each electronic product must include a device-specific power adapter, resulting in billions of them being discarded as eWaste? It's because they all require unique voltages and have different maximum current levels. Ideally, homes and offices would have multi-port power hubs that dynamically adjust to the needs of electronic products connected to them. This would eliminate the need for product vendors to have to produce disposable, device-specific power adapters for each product shipped.
There are several power adapters today that configure output voltage to the exact voltage needed by connected devices. Green Plug's method is unique in that the power negotiation is based upon digital communication. Not only can initial voltages be matched to connected devices, but smart power hubs can dynamically react to changing conditions. New monitoring and control applications are possible when there's two way communication between powered devices and their power sources. Green Plug's interactive communication model enables standby power shutoff and dynamic reconfiguration of output power based upon changing state of powered devices.
Someday, Green Plug's GreentalkTM protocol may become a standard. A non-profit industry consortium, the Alliance for Universal Power Supplies http://www.allianceforuniversalpower.org/ has been set up to bring manufacturers and other stakeholders together to drive, develop and promote standards for the power supply and electronics products industry. Green Plug has only just begun working with major CE device manufacturers that all recognize that the existing one-to-one power model is broken. It costs manufacturers a lot of money to include power adapters in their products; consumers hate them (who doesn't have a drawer full?); and they are normally thrown away when they are in perfect working order. That's not sustainable and there is a better way. Green Plug is making terrific progress in its discussions with the most popular vendors. Decisions that affect hundreds of millions or billions of product units are not made quickly. Our first customer demonstrated an award-winning power adapter at CES and we showcased several concept systems at CES that showed interoperable power see http://blog.greenplug.us/2009/01/green-plug-and-innergie-the-universal-p... . We've begun working with influential organizations that see the potential for the new open systems power model http://www.greenplug.us/supporters.php.
Greentalk is licensed free of charge to qualified manufacturers of load devices (electronic products that consume power.) On the load device, Greentalk can run in an existing processor and in some cases can be implemented for no added cost. Even in devices that require hardware modifications to run Greentalk, the cost of implementing it in the load is a tiny fraction of the cost of an external power adapter. Even legacy devices can get power from a Green Plug-enabled power hub through a smart cable. If we could get beyond the chicken-and-egg scenario and imagine that smart power hubs are ubiquitous, product vendors could eliminate the cost of building, packaging and shipping external power adapters with their products. Everyone wins.
You can expect to see some announcements this year of major electronic product vendors incorporating the free Greentalk protocol into their products. We hope you will continue to support our mission by voting to encourage more manufacturers to adopt this technology at http://www.iwantmygreenplug.com/
Seth Socolow, VP Corporate Marketing
Green Plug, Inc.
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