"not, however, scare mongering beardy weirdoes on an environmental crusade, but committed and informed futurists who believe that commerce, profit and pleasure need not have consequences for the earth's natural resources, or well being."The intelligence of the surge protector is actually quite simple. It has one uncontrolled outlet that the PC plugs into; when the power draw from that outlet drops below a certain level, it shuts off power to all the other outlets as well (which could have other computer peripherals or electronics plugged into them). I saw a similar power strip prototype from someone at Novem at the Berkeley standby power workshop a couple of years ago. In that case, the control signal came from a USB cable plugged into the PC's USB port, so when the USB bus loses power, the power strip shuts off power to all its outlets.
The idea of using the PC to control the power to its peripherals suggests the opportunity for further integration of power supply and management within the PC "ecosystem." ACPI was supposed to provide some of this integration, but in practice it seems not to be used much. Powering peripherals from the computer's power supply can be accomplished with USB, but the allowable power levels are too low for most devices (at least with standard USB; maybe the new revisions will help expand this opportunity). I think it would be worth looking at the savings potential from this integration, to see if further work here is warranted.
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There is a US intelligent power strip called the Smart Strip which appears to operate in much the same way.
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