AUG 03

I've heard of some interesting ideas for automating this such as linking it to your front door or garage door so that the home would be automatically turned off or on if you forgot to do it.

A similar result can be achieved on a smaller scale by centrally locating a home's audio/video and PC equipment and putting them on one switch to keep them from draining power while not in use.

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I don't know how you do it in North America, but my limited understanding of British electricity supply is that each house has several main circuits, each of which has its own master fuse at the point where the power comes into the home.
Thus it's quite usual for the lights to all be on one circuit, the downstairs power points on another and the upstairs on a third.
UK electrical safety rules ensure that a fuse blows as close to the error as possible (there's a fuse in the device, a fuse in the plug at the far end of its wire, a fuse in the socket that plug goes into in the wall, a fuse in the master curcuit that's on and a fuse for the house).
Something has to go pretty seriously wrong to take down even one circuit, but the break-down by circuits means your fridge doesn't lose power when the lights blow a fuse.

It only takes a tiny extension of this idea to solve the problem this guy's playing with, and to do it quite straightforwardly: wire the house with one circuit for the "always on" kit (and use visibly different sockets in the wall on that circuit) and the rest of the house as above.
Then have a master switch by the fuse box, which turns off all circuits except the "always on" one.

At least some businesses do something fairly close to this already: they have one circuit that's wired to the UPS (and marked as such) for the sake of mission-critical equipment; while the bulk of electrical kit's wired to the general mains.

I want a switch like this to control my teenagers speech. They waste energy more than anyone.

I was thinking it would be great to have a way to kill phantom powered devices when you're out of the house - just like you flip off the kitchen light when you leave in the morning. If someone actually designs this, makes it easy to install, is low maintenance and is not overly expensive - it could be revolutionary. I'm just wondering why it hasn't been done on this level until now.

Love it! A great example of brilliantly executed idea, and simple execution. If there were more products like this out there, I would run out of material for my blog . . .
marguerite
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
"The Daily Sins of a Green Girl Wannabe"

With this situation, I think the idea of having two main lines would work, with a switch at every outlet. On one side of the switch, it enables master shut off, the other, always on. Not sure how feasible that is.

Slightly off topic, but still related ...

My wife and I just returned from China and in our hotel room there was a slot in the wall to place your room e-key. Putting your key in this slot (and leaving it inserted) turned on the room's power.

While it would have been nice to leave the air conditioner on while we were out, in a country trying to reduce power consumption this was a great idea. I hope it comes to North American hotels (and maybe a modified version like described in the article in homes) soon.

Does anyone know who makes the hotel room system that you insert your key to turn on the power?