*Talking refrigerators have been the vaporware for ubicomp since I don't know when.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090115-refrigerators-talk-power-among-themselves.html
An Australian research agency has developed a power-management approach for refrigerators in which the appliances talk to each other to determine the optimum time to use power from a mix of renewable and conventional sources. The system adds a peer-based network to the usual command-and-control structure in which a utility or firm hired by a utility remotely changes appliance behavior or sends a request to a customer's equipment for a change in behavior.
Refrigerators and freezers have a surprising amount of discretion about some activities they perform, with a range of safe temperatures, and certain activities (primarily defrosting) that can happen at any given time. With no internal clock and no knowledge of power-grid events, refrigerators may choose to use the most power at the worst time.
The design from CSIRO, Australia's national science and research agency, would allow a large network of refrigerators to coordinate usage among each other: if one refrigerator was reaching the end of a safe abeyence in lowering temperature, and another could put off a defrost cycle, they could negotiate behavior.
Similarly, CSIRO envisions fridges that have the ability to store power in the form of using excess solar power during non-peak times to reduce internal temperature....
