Home Appliance That Can Operate In A Time Range
OwnerPhilip Scott Lyren, William James Lyren +1inventors
InventorsPhilip Scott Lyren, William James Lyren, William Christopher Lyren
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A home appliance can operate in a future time frame. Information is obtained from a power distributor in order to determine a time when to operate the home appliance in this future time frame. The home appliance then operates at the time determined with information from the power distributor.
Claims30
1) A home appliance, comprising:
- a memory storing instructions;
- and
- a processing unit that executes the instructions to store operating information over a time period, analyze the operating information to determine a future time frame when the home appliance can operate, communicate the future time frame to a power distributor that provides electrical power to the home appliance, receive from the power distributor a time to operate the home appliance during the future time period, and operate the home appliance at the time received from the power distributor and with the electrical power received from the power distributor.
7) A method executed by an electrical device of a customer, comprising:
- receiving, at the electrical device of the customer, requests for power from a plurality of different home appliances of the customer;
- transmitting, by the electrical device of the customer, the requests for power to a power distributor;
- receiving, at the electrical device of the customer and from the power distributor, future times when the plurality of different home appliances of the customer can begin to utilize the requests for power;
- and
- instructing, by the electrical device of the customer, the plurality of different home appliances of the customer when in time to commence usage of the requests for power based on the future times received from the power distributor.
13) A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions for causing a home appliance to execute a method, comprising:
- analyze historic operating information of the home appliance to determine a probability that the home appliance will operate during a future time frame;
- provide the future time frame to a power distributor;
- receive from the power distributor a time to operate the home appliance during the future time period;
- and
- operate the home appliance at the time received from the power distributor and with electrical power received from the power distributor.
20) A system, comprising:
- a plurality of home appliances;
- a power distributor that supplies electrical power to the home appliances;
- and
- a load manager including a memory that stores instructions and a processing unit that executes the instructions to determine a future time range during which each of the home appliances can operate, communicate with the power distributor to determine a time to begin operating the home appliances during the future time range, and instruct the home appliances to begin to operate at the time, wherein the time at which the home appliances begin to operate represents a lowest cost to purchase power during the future time range.
25) A method executed by a load manager having a processing unit, comprising:
- obtaining, by the load manager, a future time range during which a home appliance will operate;
- providing, by the load manager, a power distributor with the future time range and an amount of power to be consumed by the home appliance during the future time range;
- negotiating, by the load manager and with the power distributor, a time to operate the home appliance during the future time range;
- and
- instructing, by the load manager, the home appliance to operate at the time.
27) The method of 25 further comprising:
- predicting the future time range based on an analysis of historic operating information of the home appliance;
- instructing the customer of the future time range before the home appliance operates at the time.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.