Design and implementation of a socket with low standby power

Turned-off electric home appliances generally still require standby power when they are plugged in. In this paper we present a way to reduce the standby power of a socket. Our socket supplies the appliances with power when the user turns them on. When the user turns them off, our socket shuts the electric power off and reduces the standby power to zero. Our design, which uses a microcontroller unit (MCU), receives signals from a pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor which detects the user approaching the socket. A power detector provides an MCU to control the solid state relay (SSR) On/Off when used as an appliance switch for shutting off the standby power. The components we use are very inexpensive and consume only 0.2 W. The MCU monitoring program provides both automatic detection of the user by the PIR sensor and detection of power consumption.