Blog
October 19, 2023
With energy prices still very high in the UK, finding new ways to save energy has become a necessity for many. Happily, saving money and saving the planet can go hand in hand, thanks to smart plugs.
Smart plugs have emerged as a solution that can not only make your life more convenient, but can also help you reduce energy consumption and cut your bills. We’ll take a look at several ways you can use smart to save energy and money, but first: what are smart plugs anyway?
What Are Smart Plugs?
Smart plugs are network-enabled sockets that plug into your existing electrical outlets. They often connect to WiFi, but some of them use other networks like Zigbee. These network-connected plugs enable you to control the power supply to your appliances through your smartphone, computer, or voice assistant.
These smart plugs can be used as standalone devices, or as the backbone of an entire smart home ecosystem. They can help you manage your energy consumption more efficiently, by scheduling or remotely controlling your usage.
It’s important to note that these plugs won’t save you money automatically though – in fact, with the upfront cost of buying them, it makes sense to really analyse what you’d be able to use them for, and how much energy it would save you.
Before taking the plunge it’s good to have an idea of the ‘payback period’ – when you’ll have saved enough energy to justify the upfront cost of a smart plug.
How Can Smart Plugs Help Save Me Money?
Below are some typical ways in which smart plugs can save you money and energy – it will be useful to think about each of these, in turn, to work out if a smart plug actually makes sense in your home.
Reduce Your Standby Power Consumption
One of the most significant ways to save energy is by turning off your “vampire” standby devices. This problem is less common these days, as energy efficiency standards have continued to improve – nevertheless, some older energy vampires can still suck up tens or even hundreds of watts per hour.
It’s possible that, by turning off a device when it’s not needed, you’ll eventually save enough energy to pay back the initial outlay on the smart plug itself.
You will of course have a shorter payback period if you get a cheaper plug – we rate TP-Link Kasa, as they’re pretty rock solid and often on sale too. You can also sometimes find cheap and cheerful smart plugs at Lidl and Aldi.
There are plenty of devices like TVs, game consoles, and chargers, that continue to consume energy even when ‘off’. These are all good candidates to investigate if you’re thinking about a smart plug’s payback period.
You can often find out what a device’s standby power consumption is either in the instruction manual, or by watching your smart meter display when plugging in the device. Or, you can buy one of these.
TP Link Kasa smart plugs are cheap but reliable
Setting Schedules and Timers
Smart plugs provide you with the ability to create schedules and timers for your appliances. For example, you can set your coffee maker to turn on in the morning, ensuring your morning caffeine is ready when you wake up. This automation ensures your devices run only when needed, reducing energy consumption and your bills.
In order to really take the savings up a level, it helps if you’re scheduling your devices while on a time-of-use tariff. A smart plug working in tandem with time of use means you can shift your energy to a cheaper time slot. Again, you’ll need to work out how much load you can actually shift, and how much it will save you, when trying to work out the payback time for your smart plug(s). We’ll touch on this more later.
Monitoring Your Usage
Some smart plugs come with energy monitoring features, allowing you to track how much electricity the appliance that’s plugged in is using. If you have no other way of doing this, such as through a smart meter or a consumption monitor, then a smart plug can be a great ‘2 in 1’ option.
Getting insight into your energy usage can be helpful in identifying power-hungry gadgets, and spotting patterns about your consumption. With this information, you can choose to replace inefficient appliances or adjust your usage habits to save money over time. Knowledge is power!
Enable Remote Control
The remote control functionality of smart plugs can be a total game-changer. Whether you’re at work, on holiday, or simply not at home, you can manage your connected appliances and devices from your smartphone.
Forgot to turn off that energy-hungry gizmo? No problem – just pull out your phone and do it remotely. Remote control enables you to make real-time decisions to reduce energy waste and lower your bills.
Computer, enable remote control energy!
How To Run A Smart Plug Cost-Benefit Analysis
The easiest way to work out how much you’d energy you’d need to shift to pay back the cost of a smart plug, is to start with the cost of a unit and the cost of the plug. Let’s say your smart plug costs £10 (or, more simply for our example, 1000 pence). And let’s say a kilowatt-hour costs roughly 28 pence, accurate at the time of writing.
1000 divided by 28 gives you 35.7 – this is the number of kilowatt hours you would need to save in order to pay back the upfront cost of the plug.
That cost payback could come in several different ways – for example, turning off a 1kw device for 35.7 hours would do it. Or you could turn off a 100w device for 350.7 hours (as there are 1000 watts in a kilowatt). Given that a smart plug should last several years at least, it’s perfectly possible to get there eventually.
You’ll need to know how many watts/kilowatts you could save, and for how long – but the basic principle is that the bigger the electrical load and the longer you turn off, the faster your payback will be.
Note: If you’re shifting usage on a TOU tariff, calculating your payback time is slightly different. Here, instead of dividing your 1000 pence by 28, you would divide it by the difference between your expensive rate and your cheap rate.
What about the running costs of the plug itself?
It’s true that smart plugs do need a little bit of electricity to keep themselves running and connected to your wifi. The energy cost of this is truly negligible though – the TP Link Kasa, for example, has a standby usage of around 1.5 watts. As long as you’re saving more energy than that – and it’s hard not to – then a smart plug will more than cover its own energy use.
Smart Plugs Can Save You Money – But…
Smart plugs can be a cost-effective and user-friendly way to save money on your energy bills while contributing to a sustainable future. It’s important to think about how you intend to use these devices though – they won’t save you money automatically, especially with their upfront cost.
Still – if you’re combating vampire appliances, maximising time-of-use scheduling, and making use of energy insights, then a smart plug should (eventually) pay back its initial cost, and then some. And don’t forget – outside of any bill savings, you’re also making your life a little more convenient, and doing right by the planet too!
That’s it for our guide on saving energy with smart plugs. We hope you enjoyed reading it. Do you have a top tip on saving energy with smart plugs? We’d love to hear it in the comments! And if you like this sort of thing, you can also check out the rest of our blog for more eco-friendly tips, tricks, and product reviews. Until next time.
