Smart Plugs & Saving £££s With What I Found 

Would you mind sharing where you got the tado plugs from?

I was surprised how much the microwave used, having naively thought that the wattage was input not output.

@@gchecosse that’s true - you’d think it should be really. Still relatively low overall consumption

Yup, but my "ambient" power is so low I can see when we boil kettle for coffee in the morning

TP-Link users forum suggests that power used by Tapo P100/105 smart plug is

Just seen a later reply from EV Man : "I plugged 6 in a chain and it said 0.1W"

​@@ecok That is a very dangerous thing to do. I heard that if you chain 10 it will open some kind of inter dimensional rift.

About 9 quid a year if my maths is working today. I've found with the small stuff it's not worth it individually, but when you start adding all the small stuffs together it becomes so.

Tapo - I gave up on them as had to reset the plug back to new to reset power settings data, has that changed now?

I've just bought one of their energy monitoring plugs (having three of their smart plugs already) have been pleasantly surprised to find that my tropical fish tanks usage is much lower than i expected from this video, as in around 0.5kWh/day or about 15p so £50/year. Was expecting it to be 2x that. Regards Tapo, their products seem to be well priced and reliable.For energy monotoring i also think its more convenient to see usage on a smartphone than a much bulkier smart plug that has a small screen

I didnt like tapo for any kind of energy reporting, for live draw its fine but any historical data is useless, after an 8 hour gaming session with a TP plugged into a dumb energy monitor it was 500-1000w total draw off of the dumb energy monitor and the peak power draw was nowhere near what it actually got to. Even with tapo plugged into a receiver that has a minimum power level of 30w it recorded a peak of 29watts, I don't know how it calculates things but any energy monitoring plug imo should have live info all the time being collected and transmitted whether it be locally or cloud or collect live info and send it at intervals. Taking interval readings then doing math to estimate usage is 100% useless.

@@01mememememe Yes, now they have upgraded a lot, you can reset the energy information in the app, you can enter the TOU rate to calculate your daily electricity bill, and you can also email the energy information to you. Tapo's energy monitoring smart plug is the best on the market.

I have a pond pump (outside fish!) it’s using 283 watts whilst running I’m paying 42p daytime rate on my Octopus Go fix. .. no I didn’t do exact sums but approx 50p every 4 hours Ooooooch! All the on line articles say don’t turn off the pumps…………. I bought a timer so they only run between 0030-0430 and 1100-1630 (Max solar generation for SW facing array)…. 🤞 hopefully the fish will be OK….,,,,,..

@@chrisjones6542 . I hope so to - at least you have the night time rate and solar - wish I had the spare cash - south facing uninterrupted large roof but not enough spare cash thanks to Covid!

Yes but picture quality sufers turning of stand by on tv will shorten life of power supply then you need new tv

@@onetwo2201 I'd like to see statistical evidence of the scale of that. The only thing likely to suffer is the capacitors in the switch mode power supply. Some are wise than others but given TV reliability now compared with my childhood of the repair man coming out to change valves, it's a world apart. I've never had a TV power supply fail. As to turning to ECO mode, yes it's a decision to make but whether you notice it after a while, I would argue not. It's a choice though, compare the difference and decide accordingly.

Fridge 24/7. Greedy things especially if you gave the American double ones

We have 2 fridge freezers running, now that uses a lot. Thankfully with a 4kwh solar array and 14kwh battery we can keep the costs low

Data, data, data.

Snap. Apart from the cost I ruled out a HP dryer because it is in our garage which is too cold in winter for it to work. I have been looking at how to schedule our condenser dryer for off peak use at night because the dryer does not have a built in timer like our dishwasher. Apart from my wife worrying about the dryer bursting into flames overnight (because her mothers one did 25 years ago!), will it work via one of these smart plugs or just a simple mechanical timer?

About 1w - I tried two back to back to check 😞

From a GivEnergy installer. I believe CEF will be selling them direct shortly too.

@@robinbennett5994 nothing suspicious, just rebadged I imagine and using their own backend.

Just the plugs.

From a GivEnergy installer at the mo. I believe a guy on Facebook is doing them too. facebook.com/groups/5243922612384710/about/ CEF Electrical will be doing them shortly I believe.

Usolarshop .co .uk 👍

Yes

As a GivEnergy battery storage owner and app user, I would recommend spending your hard earned cash elsewhere.

I'd thought the same before getting a smart meter, I guess it's output not input

The energy isn't all going on cooking. There's the turntable, light and display for starters.

More the merrier for me. Anything that uses more than a small bit of electric.

Been googling where to obtain the givenergy plugs. Any suggestions? Try and set up an affiliate link as I suspect they will sell a ton based on this video :)

I only paid £9 each. Brought 8

​@@nxsynjs If you look on Amazon for 'smart plugs with energy monitoring', you'll find lots of people selling very similar looking circular devices with the same blue on/off button on the side.

@@robinbennett5994 Yeah. I have some none givenergy ones, but seeing as i'm about to have some givenergy batteries I was looking for a fully integrated system. Thanks anyway :)

I use a couple of TP-Link Tapo smart plugs with extension leads with 4 sockets. As long as the total load remains within the capacity of the smart plug they work fine. (typically multi socket extension feed low power devices, i.e .not heaters) The maximum wattage for the Tapo is 2990w

I've read that its a bit less than 1W on standby. Mounts up if you have plenty of them ... but presumably anyone who is well organised, by using smart plugs, will easily save that much with things not left-on :) Some of these devices are unable to monitor very low power consumption, so maybe this won't work, but I fancy piggy-backing one on another to log usage :)

Of course but for accurate data you realyl need to monitor for at least a month so if you have many appliances to check it will take many months to get data for them all.

How

@@coolmonkey619 I just don’t use much of each and it’s been mild weather so far , I expect it to go up a bit when it gets colder but I have a wood stove and get most of my wood for free so i shouldn’t get too high a bill this winter

yes right we are getting £66 my supplier put £20 in my bank which was listed as the payment no sign of the £66 or £67 we were meant to get

I plugged 6 in a chain and it said 0.1W.

@@ElectricVehicleMan very clever, never thought about that.

@@ElectricVehicleMan what brand are they and do they work with Z-Wave or Zigbee?

It does. It makes me chuckle when people spend thousands just to save hundreds, 15 years down the line! I could go out and spend £10k on solar and £40k on an electric car, then die crossing the road a week later!!

It’s not adhoc monitoring, they’re permanent. Like I said, got weeks/months of data.

@@ElectricVehicleMan thanks for clarifying... if it is permanent then it is a bit of a contradiction, what I mean is that after the initial survey and resulting benefits it’s just monitoring for the sake of monitoring whilst wasting energy doing it. There is a valid argument on being able to spot malfunctions, however like in the example of the fish tank a thermometer would have been more appropriate in the first place and this was however an odd situation as I presume the issue was with the thermostat. In general I would personally adopt using RCBO’s instead, this way the residual current side, the neutral, would start tripping and highlight issues, specially on resistive loads starting to fail, also after the initial investment there aren’t any running costs. Ultimately good practices are the key factor in saving energy, self discipline in usage and regular maintenance.

@@nilofido411 There’s other plans in place too. For example, in the event of a power cut (where the battery takes over) the Giv system will turn off anything powered by a plug I deem necessary, so to not drain the battery backup prematurely. As well as normal smart plug functions of course, scheduling things to turn on at cheaper times for example.

Maybe using a plug in watt meter would be more beneficial and cheaper? Checking items 1 at a time rather than a permanent stream of data.

If you have two, plug one into the other for a few days. The difference in energy usage reported by the plugs will be the usage of the second plug. Personally I’d buy one or two plugs and cycle them round to find the main culprits, but that wouldn’t let me spot a sudden change in usage such as the aquarium in the video

They’re generally esp8266 based and will use around 1w

Video up soon.

I'm having trouble. Non of my firmware will update. Doesn't seem to affect the performance much but is annoying.

@@eddyd8745 Send an email to support.

Pointless putting one on mine. She doesn’t do much to waste any energy 😂

And this do you know what’s using what over time?

They use next to nothing.

It took about an hour to setup, the rest is just looking at an app. With that extra I can buy things to ‘live my life’. Assuming you can afford to waste it in the first place, which I’m guessing you can.

@@ElectricVehicleMan obviously it a concern for all hence watch the vlogs but , going this far seem’s to promote Anxiety in people in day to day living in my view , iv witnessed friends who now live their lives obsessed that that spent 3kw cooking food and its came from the grid rather than their battery , yes its good being cautious but living life has be in the balance , its not nice watching people with Anxiety going through it watching 10p consumption when they are very wealthy individuals , just my observations of your Audience .

@@TACADO1 I don’t know anyone who has anxiety with that. They just try to avoid wasting money. Hardly a mental breakdown.

@@ElectricVehicleMan think you missed the point ! Enjoy your day

I less subscriber sad little man

If I get the gateway then I won’t notice. The battery will take over.

@@ElectricVehicleMan How about a 4 hour power cut in the early morning?

@@tuc-dh4df Same. Power cuts are unlikely at worst, and even then it would be peak times only.