Addressable Electrical Outlets

摘要

Smart Appliances are defined that assist in reducing energy consumption or cost. The Smart Appliances communicate with Smart Energy sources via the power lines and in particular by injecting communications signals between the live plus neutral power lines on the one hand and the ground line on the other hand, the communications protocol allowing a power source to identify the electrical circuit to which an appliance is connected and thereby to route a selected type of power to the appliance on the correct electrical circuit for that appliance.;An addressable electrical outlet is also disclosed as one form of Smart Appliance.

主权项

1. An addressable electrical power connector comprising:
terminals for connecting to live, neutral and ground wires from a power distribution unit; a signal injector/extractor circuit operative to infect on to the common mode of the live and neutral conductors, relative to the ground conductor, a data-bearing communications signal and further operative to extract a data-bearing signal from to the common mode of the live and neutral conductors, relative to the ground conductor; and a transceiver circuit operative to process a signal extracted by said signal extractor, and to decode said communications data, and further operative to encode communications data to be injected by said signal injector circuit, the transceiver circuit passing on said decoded communications data to permit control of the operation of an appliance connected to said connector when said data contains an address associated with said connector.