Easy home automation plus “Smart Plugs” equals energy savings

by Ian Brizdle | Feb. 13, 2018

The Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini were hot ticket items this past holiday season, and I ended up receiving a Google Home Mini as a gift. Besides being your digital secretary, these devices can take basic home automation one step further by communicating with other Wi-Fi-enabled items like “Smart Plugs” and controlling them with the sound of your voice.

Take command of your energy use: “Hey Google, turn off the living room lamp.” or “Alexa, turn on the air conditioner.” Perhaps the overlooked byproduct of this desire to control your devices with voice commands is the opportunity to identify more ways to tweak your energy usage.

The Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini present an opportunity to implement a simple level of automation with the fun and convenience of using your voice. However, since your existing household electronic devices are probably not “smart” Wi-Fi-enabled devices, they need a little help in order to communicate with your Echo Dot or Home Mini. This is why the next logical step for me was to shop for Smart Plugs.

What is a smart plug? A smart plug is a device that has a grounded female power socket on one side and male socket on the other. It fits in-between an appliance power cord and the outlet and connects to the Wi-Fi in your house. You can then download an app on your smart phone and configure your smart plug to record energy usage, set on-off timers, and turn the device on or off at the touch of a button on your phone app. Being able to monitor and control your energy usage through the smart plug and mobile app is something that could always be done, but the Amazon and Google devices have made them top sellers lately.

Where are the opportunities to use Smart Plugs? You can set up smart plugs to control lamps, fans, TVs, air conditioners and basically any kind of electronic device. Some devices make less sense than others though — like VCRs, clocks, modems, and anything else that resets itself and requires time to reboot when the power is shut off and turned back on. Also, if a device does not remember it’s on/off state, then turning on the smart plug may not necessarily turn the device itself back on (although it can definitely still turn it off).

For me, the obvious energy villain in my apartment is the wall mount air conditioning unit. After plugging the smart plug into the outlet and the A/C back into the smart plug, I installed the phone app and configured the smart plug and Home Mini. Now I can say, “Hey Google, turn off the A/C,” and it turns it off. Turning it on also works, as I was hoping, because the device remembers the on/off state — so when power is restored it continues doing what it was doing when power was shut off.

So now what? I am able to monitor my daily kWh usage with the smart plug app and collect baseline data. During the week when I am at work during the day and only running the A/C at night, my usage is around 3–4 kWh/day. During the weekends when I am home most of the time, it can go up to 6–8 kWh/day! I have already identified three possible opportunities to save money and now I can measure the results:

• Turn up the “Eco mode” temperature setting
• Use the timer in the app to shut off the A/C at night between midnight and 6 a.m. when I am sleeping
• Limit the daytime A/C energy usage spike on the weekends when I am home

If you’re looking for energy saving tips or rebates, please visit Hawaii Energy.

Ian Brizdle is an online communications analyst at Hawaiian Electric Company.