GainSpan has a chip that can curb energy consumption in the home, and notify your doctor if you're about to have a heart attack. The company has produced an energy efficient WiFi chip that it hopes to install in dryers, electrical meters and other devices in the home. The idea is that utilities and consumers will shut off and/or power down  appliances with wireless signals remotely to curb electricity consumption. GainSpan is currently working with manufacturers to insert its chip into cold storage units, meters and other devices. Hitachi Plant Technologies, the industrial technology arm of the Japanese giant, makes sensors incorporating GainSpan's chips. The company was spun out of Intel. In an experiment, a large South Korean manufacturer asked the company to put the chip onto an electrocardiogram monitor, said CEO Vijay Parmar. It took about a month, but the company did it. A demonstration took place recently in Seoul. The chip fits onto a pad that is stuck onto a heart patient's chest. (In a real-life situation, security and other issues would have to be navigated, but you can imagine this would be the sort of thing you'd like to stick on an ailing parent at home. When the heart begins to wobble, a signal could be sent from a home base station to the hospital and the kids.) The "smart home" concept has been bandied about for years. Remember those refrigerators in the late '90s with built-in screens and Internet connections? Consumers didn't exactly snap them up. The rising cost of electricity, water and gas, however, is breathing new life into the concept. Powering down devices will cut the monthly power bills for consumers. Installing this type of equipment broadly will also allow utilities to avoid brown-outs or the need for expensive peaker plants. Two of the biggest greentech IPOs to date -- Comverge and EnerNoc -- essentially focus on this market. The question over the next five years is which standards and technologies will win. GainSpan directly competes against Zigbee as well as proprietary standards. All of them work, but it's unclear where and how utilities, equipment manufacturers and services companies will adopt them. Zigbee so far has amassed the broadest support, but Parmar and others argue it's a standard that's not loved by those that have to buy the equipment. Companies representing each of the approaches will debate it as the upcoming Greentech Innovations: End to End Electricity on November 18. Tune in if you can -- the sparks should fly.