Design and development of energy saver electrical plug

Abstract

Recent years, climate change and decrement in natural resources become common concerns for all around the world. Efforts are putting on research of possibility of new resources replacement and ways to save energy. From researches shows that eliminating standby power could be one of the alternative for energy saving. There are a few types of smart power strips which are able to control power supply to different appliances and cut off the supply when the appliances are not in used. However, most of the smart strips that are currently available in the market are worked based on “master and slave” principle, where desired appliance that plugged into master outlet will be monitored and used as the threshold to control all peripherals that plugged into same strip. Individual outlets control is hardly to achieve by the products available in market. The project is aimed to design and develop an intelligent energy saving plug with power consumption measuring ability. Researches and experiment were conducted to determine standby power drawn by domestic electrical appliances and the project was developed based on the data from the research. The energy saver plug was tested with its accuracy and power consumption of the plug was determined. In conclusion, the project objectives were met. However, the power consumption of the energy plug is still considered high. Therefore, further improvement could be carried out to reduce the power required. It is recommended to replace the relay block that used in the project with TRIAC to reduce the size and increase the reliability of the plug.