[LINK] Free Sydney Smart Home

[Tom Worthington]

The NSW Government is offering a family a free smart home in Sydney for
a year. The family will receive free accommodation in return for writing
about their experience using the energy and water efficient features of
the house at the Newington Smart Village Project in western Sydney.

The home uses some innovative energy technology, such as fuel cells, but 
the "smart" part does not look very innovative, having the usual,
and mostly useless, "you can monitor it from your iPhone" features of 
such display homes.

Nate Cochrane described it in "Utilities seek Jetsons for home of the 
future" (IT News, Feb 9, 2010): 
<http://www.itnews.com.au/News/166760,utilities-seek-jetsons-for-home-of-the-future.aspx> 


One catch is that you have to apply via the Energy Australia E-Tendering
Portal, which is not exactly user friendly for the average family. The 
system is designed for companies, so those without an ABN have to 
register by pretending to be overseas company (tender ENERGY-447194): 
<https://www.tenderlink.com/energy/>.

One interesting feature of the the e-tendering system is that they
provide a web based forum to ask questions about a tender and get
answers. Here is the Q&A on the smart home (you need to register to see
this):
<https://www.tenderlink.com/energy/?&tenderer=2744.117&forum&topic=2600.9978>.

More in my blog:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2010/02/smart-home-in-sydney-for-free.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890