Question about smart plugs and energy costs

Thready

Hi There

With the recent energy price hikes there has been a lot in the press the past few days about the cost of devices being left on standby and I suspect I am not alone in being guilty of leaving a lot of things either on standby or permanently on [sky box, microwave etc].

I have a number of smart plugs which I use for some items where the plugs are difficult to access but the smart plug makes it easy for me to turn on and off, but am now wondering whether I am kidding myself about this saving money as presumably the smart plug is still drawing down electricity. 

Therefore would it be a false ecomomy to invest in more plugs for those harder to reach sockets?

Petriix

Thready said:

Hi There

With the recent energy price hikes there has been a lot in the press the past few days about the cost of devices being left on standby and I suspect I am not alone in being guilty of leaving a lot of things either on standby or permanently on [sky box, microwave etc].

I have a number of smart plugs which I use for some items where the plugs are difficult to access but the smart plug makes it easy for me to turn on and off, but am now wondering whether I am kidding myself about this saving money as presumably the smart plug is still drawing down electricity. 

Therefore would it be a false ecomomy to invest in more plugs for those harder to reach sockets?

There's been a lot of misinformation about leaving things on standby. Savings are negligible for modern devices and the smart plug itself will often use similar or more than the savings.

However, smart plugs with energy monitoring built in can help you to identify what items use more power than you think and there may be benefit in programmatically turning some things off.

It's worthwhile figuring out if you have any devices using more power than expected - I was surprised to find that an old amplifier powering some ceiling speakers was using 30W all the time.

The real energy savings lie with reducing your demand for heat. Wash clothes cooler, air dry them, turn the heating down, don't use electric heaters, less oven meals, shorter showers, shallower baths etc... 

matelodave

I use a smart plug to turn off the TV, DVD player and surround sound system all in one go working on the assumption that the standby drain of one smart plug is probably a lot less that the combined total of all the stuff that's connected to it.

As Petrix points out there can be quite a lot of other stuff that you wouldn't think uses all that much, However, using an energy monitor plug (cost around £12-£15), I discovered that our electric reclining armchairs were chewing through 15watts each = 30 watts x 8760 hours in a year = 262kwh at 29p = £76 a year, so a smart plug at £15 plus whatever power it uses saves us around £60 a year.