Smart plugs are a great way to automate your dumb devices, like lamps, game systems, and coffee makers. They also promise energy and money savings. But will they save enough money to pay for themselves? Maybe eventually.
Smart Plugs Are Perfect For Simple Automation
We like smart plugs because they’re easy to set up and make for great automation. Just plug it into an electrical outlet and then plug something into it. You now have a smart outlet—use an app for the rest. No need to get out any tools, or play with electrical wiring.
You might think that smart plugs would be a great way to save energy too. After all, you can make sure whatever the smart plug controls aren’t left on all day long by setting up a simple schedule to turn things off when you leave. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Many of your electronics are as energy efficient possible, to begin with, and at least in the United States, electricity is a fairly cheap resource.
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You Use Energy to Save Energy
The easiest way to save energy is to unplug your devices, but that’s inconvenient. Some things you need running often enough that walking around the house and plugging in everything would get old quick.
While connecting everything to a smart plug sounds like a money-saving solution at first, two factors are working against you. First, if your concern is vampire energy, well, that doesn’t cost you as much as you might think. Second, smart plugs draw power to work. That’s necessary when you think about it; your plug needs to connect to something (Wi-Fi, Z-wave, etc.), and it needs to listen for signals. Those might be timed signals from a schedule or one you send through an app or a voice assistant.
Thankfully smart plugs don’t consume much energy. We tested three different smart plugs with a Kill A Watt monitor, and after a half-hour of measuring the meter still showed 0.00 kilowatts used. Left plugged in long enough, eventually, we’d measure something but the use is pretty low.
But the same holds with vampire energy, in the past when we tried measuring how much energy a single device used when turned off, the only way we got results was by plugging in six devices.
So if you hope to prevent the vampire energy costs with a smart device, you should hold off. The low cost of vampire energy and the cost to run smart plugs will cancel each other out.
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Source : Will a Smart Plug Pay For Itself?
