The PumPing Tap does not like wasted power. It's an electrical socket with a spring-loaded ejector seat, which pops plugs right out if they're slowly sucking energy when not in active use.
The idea is to combat vampire power, the massive amount of energy slowly sapped by idling gizmos, like microwaves that aren’t cooking or chargers that aren’t charging anything. The PumPing Tap (which is still in the design stage, sadly) monitors the flow of energy, and if you don't use a device for 10 minutes — ptooie! — it's unplugged.
Ten minutes seems like a pretty short window in which to use the device, and as Mother Nature Network's Matt Hickman points out, isn't the plug using a small amount of power to monitor the power use of the bigger appliances? Considering that most people leave their microwaves plugged in all the time, it's probably an energy saver in the end. But pity the poor people who might install these devices, forget, and then wonder why their coffee machine won't turn on in the morning.
