Is There an Energy Tree in Your Future?

I recently saw this kooky little creation – The Energy Tree. While it’s odd for sure, it’s a pretty cool idea.

The Energy Tree was a project developed for Microsoft’s StartSomthing PC Competition by Ben Arent, a UK Product & Interaction Designer. His portfolio is pretty neat, with many cool designs to see but this project might be the most useful dream product for green home dwellers.

Basically Arent designed the Energy tree as an “All in one device to view energy use in the home, and improve the overall energy life-cycle.” The Energy Tree, in theory, monitors power consumption and recycling use. A product like this would serve to help humans become more aware of their energy use at home, or I suppose in an office setting.

The Energy Tree has a user interface for displaying information about energy consumption. According to Arent, “The Energy Tree will grow a real tree… if you are energy efficient, but if you waste energy it will start to get a disease and or die.”

For folks saying – “This concept is crazy, it will never work!” Arent answers some questions here.

So, if something like this was on the market, would you be interested? I think it’s pretty cool. I like the whole tree metaphor. It’s a nice visual for energy use.