Smart Plugs - Money Saving

rachellelouise

Good Evening,

I am looking to add smart plugs (the plug into the wall outlet types) to rooms to try and save money with the cost of living crisis. 

The reason for the smart plugs is currently there is extension leads there with multiple electronic devises plugged in, the actual plugs are not accessible easily to manually turn on/off daily as they are behind large. furniture

I have two questions please:
1 - Is it safe to plug a 4 plug extension lead into one of these smart plugs? Or is it the equivalent to adding two extension leads together and a fire risk?

2 - Cost wise, when the plugs have been turned off and not in use, will this still incur a standby charge? Is it still a decent saving to having them on 24/7?
There are some plugs we can manually turn off, but some that we will gave to use the smart plugs in due to furnature and its just not practical to move them frequently. 

Thanks in advance

pochase

If the 4 plug extension is not using to much on its own already, the smart plug is no problem.

Yes the smart plug uses energy, otherwise you would not be able to switch it back on. It's about 1w that is used, so there is still a lot of room for savings.

Dimanche_Prochain

1) This depends on the load.  Anything under 3000W is generally going to be fine.  Esssentially Voltage x Current = Maximum capacity in Watts.  Although it'd be wise to use 230V rather than 240.

2). If they're plugged in and "on" then they'll consume some electricity, probably 1-2W each.  Whether that is more than whatever is plugged in will be up to you to find out.

Ultrasonic

What items do you have plugged in to the extension lead? They may be items that either aren't designed to be turned fully off (e.g. OLED TVs) or that use so little power in standby that it would take a very long time to make back the cost of buying a smart plug in the first place. 

JesseJames_2

My LG OLED 55 inch TV uses approx 0.8W in standby mode acccording to a power monitor attached.

So having a smart plug on that in my case is counter productive, and as the other commenter pointed out, it is not designed to be switched off at the plug anyway.

rachellelouise

Ultrasonic said:

What items do you have plugged in to the extension lead? They may be items that either aren't designed to be turned fully off (e.g. OLED TVs) or that use so little power in standby that it would take a very long time to make back the cost of buying a smart plug in the first place. 

Thankyou for the reply. The stuff in the extension isnt this, its charging cables for ipad/nintendo switch and the alexa.

The items are in my step childrens rooms, and they are only with us 50% of the time which is why I would like to have them off  when they are not here, but using a smart plug as all behind heavy furniture and not practical to switch off/on the wall multiple times a week. 

gt94sss2

It doesn't sound like you need them but for anything else reading, its also possible to get 4 plug extensions etc with each socket containing a built in smart plug 

Ultrasonic

rachellelouise said:

Ultrasonic said:

What items do you have plugged in to the extension lead? They may be items that either aren't designed to be turned fully off (e.g. OLED TVs) or that use so little power in standby that it would take a very long time to make back the cost of buying a smart plug in the first place. 

Thankyou for the reply. The stuff in the extension isnt this, its charging cables for ipad/nintendo switch and the alexa.

Do you have a smart meter in-home display you could use to see how much/little power they may use when no devices are connected? They may well fall in my second category...

Dimanche_Prochain

rachellelouise said:

Ultrasonic said:

What items do you have plugged in to the extension lead? They may be items that either aren't designed to be turned fully off (e.g. OLED TVs) or that use so little power in standby that it would take a very long time to make back the cost of buying a smart plug in the first place. 

Thankyou for the reply. The stuff in the extension isnt this, its charging cables for ipad/nintendo switch and the alexa.

The items are in my step childrens rooms, and they are only with us 50% of the time which is why I would like to have them off  when they are not here, but using a smart plug as all behind heavy furniture and not practical to switch off/on the wall multiple times a week. 

Charging cables don't use electricity unless they're charging something.  Alexa devices typically use micro-USB into the device, so they can just be disconnected there.

ctdctd

As the poster above said, chargers (unless in use) and Alexa devices use very little power so you won't get much saving by switching them off at night. 3 chargers at 1W each and an Amazon Echo Dot (Alexa) at about 3W will use maybe 3p of electricity over a 10 hour period at the new October 2022 rates, allowing for the 1W used by the smart plug. This is about £10 a year.

In addition, I've found smart plugs are quite unreliable if used to switch low powers - the relays tend to stick on which renders them useless. I use quite a few and over a few years have had over a third of them fail - various brands.

Ultrasonic

I've just tried testing a couple of my phone chargers and my laptop charger and they must all use less than 0.5 W when not in use as I could see no difference in the instantaneous power shown on my IHD with them being on or off. My bet is that the more modern the charger the lower the standby power is likely to be.