Cognitive Plug

red dot
red dot award: design concept 2008

design:
Lee Sang-Hun	Lim Yong-Bum

Cognitive Plug allows the user to easily recognise which appliance a plug belongs to at a multi-outlet socket, and hence, to turn off its power supply completely. Avoiding stand-by mode saves a significant amount of electricity.

Can you identify which plug is for the TV, amongst the other plugs in your power sockets? Do you leave your appliances on stand-by? A significant amount of electricity is wasted by appliances in stand-by mode, even though the appliance is switched off. In Korea, it has been suggested that the amount of wasted electricity is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity used in two nuclear reactors in a year. Money and electricity are wasted because people do not know about the
implications of stand-by power consumption.

Cognitive Plug is an LED-lit tag that is designed to solve this problem. Each Cognitive Plug shows an LED-lit icon, which allows the user to easily identify the appliance to which the plug belongs, and hence, to turn off its electrical power completely. The Cognitive Plug uses
only a small amount of electric power to light the icon, and prevents the user from pulling out the wrong plug. This easy and accurate system of identification helps to save electrical energy.