Californian gadget homes, 25% Standby power loss, TV games...

The standby-mode killer has yet to be proven commercially and must contend with other new products designed to tackle the same problem. But, despite some doubters, the Spanish inventors say theirs is the only product able to completely do away with a large, and growing, world-wide problem.

"We have a product on the table that will solve the standby problem definitively," says Jorge Juan García, a founder of Good for You, Good for the Planet, the Madrid-based company that invented the technology.

Green Plug is the first developer of digital technology that enables real-time collaboration between electronic devices and their power sources. The company develops and markets embeddable power supply technology to consumer electronics (CE) and power supply companies. Billions of devices including laptops, printers, speakers, routers, modems, cell phones, entertainment devices, power tools, cameras and so many other portable electronic devices require a power source that converts between 90V and 254V wall power to device-specific DC power. That means that these devices require unique power converters, and that is very costly, is extremely inconvenient and contributes to wasted resources and pollution.

With Green Plug, however, intelligent power supplies communicate with electronic devices and agree upon device power requirements for all devices connected to them. All cables and connectors are uniform; so, they work with any device! Being intelligent power sources, they eliminate wasted “phantom power” (power that is wasted when chargers are plugged in and either connected to devices that are fully charged or have no devices connected to them) and improve power utilization and efficiency.