How are you using your Emporia Smart Plugs?

[EfficiencyNerd]

Curious to hear what others are using their smart plugs for. I’ve just ordered 4 and can’t wait to get them. I have plans for some fairly complicated automations using Home Assistant, and I found a custom integration someone built that will allow control of my Emporia plugs.

I actually plan to use all 4 on the same circuit, which happens to cover a lot of ground along one wall:

• I’ll put one on my work desk power strip, and build an automation such that, whenever my laptop is connected to that external monitor, the whole desk turns on/off, powering my monitor, laptop charger, and work equipment (this is something I currently have working with a different smart plug, but I want energy monitoring for just my desk)
• Another I’ll put on my dehumidifier, which is again replacing a different smart plug – this I automatically control based on a humidity sensor and the peak electricity rates
• I’ll put one on my TV/Home Theater system, and potentially create some automations to turn it on/off when we’re sleeping or when no one is home
• Lastly I’ll put one on my chest freezer, mostly to isolate the usage specifically for that appliance (and possibly to justify buying a more energy-efficient one in the future). I don’t intend to turn this one on/off.

The layout of my circuits unfortunately mean that all these devices (in addition to my modem, router, and mini-computer server) are on one circuit which runs the length of my basement through a couple rooms.

What devices do you use your smart plugs on?

[jaspurbeck]

Hi there!

I installed 8 Emporia plugs last month. What I’ve been doing (after updating their firmware) is rotating them around my house to see which plugs are still draining energy when the device is not in use. Amazingly, I have found that my newer devices, including TVs, are not draining anything in most cases.  I am also using them to help troubleshoot which items on the circuit are sucking up so much power. In one case, we actually lowered the temp on our bar refrigerator to get its run rate down.

For our older electrical items (toaster, coffee maker, blender, old TV, some office equipment), I permanently assigned an Emporia plug to the item and set schedules for the items to be fully off from 11pm to 5pm of the following day. That way my son and husband can watch TV, use the DVD player, etc. without even noticing the items are not powered up most of the time.

An idea – we have an Amazon Visa that we use for everything we can. We used the monthly rewards to buy the Emporia view, and we are planning to buy more Emporia plugs as were are essentially getting them for free by using this card and paying it off every month.

Our monthly power bill was $430 +/- $20 when we started this journey in August. We replaced our entire HVAC system (the AC died) with high efficiency. Our bill dropped to $270 in September! We added the Emporia Vue and Emporia plugs and ended up turning off some items and adding schedules to the worst offenders. Our October bill was $180. We just replaced our dishwasher yesterday (almost dead) with an Energy Star rated dishwasher yesterday, and we are adding more plugs this coming month. In 2023, we are looking at either a hybrid electric water heater or a tankless system and solar. 🙂

Please let me know if you discover any shareable hacks – I’m on a mission!

Good luck!

 

[yort5thor]

I just finally installed my Emporia monitoring system before the new year kicked in, which includes 4 of the Smart Plugs. The main thing I was intending to use a Smart Plug for was for the small electric heater in the basement that my son uses to keep warm in the winter when he’s down there playing Minecraft. In particular, I also wanted to make use of the “scheduling” features so that I could have the plug automatically turn off every night, just in case he forgets to turn off the heater itself.

However, I woke up this morning to a notice that the plug was turned off because of drawing too much energy, so it may not work for my purposes?

[jj613]

I have a 16-channel Vue2 in a 40-circuit breaker panel so I can’t monitor everything.   I use a few smart plugs to monitor some plug-in devices that have their own home-run circuits from the panel.  This way I can monitor them without using CTs.

I used one smart plug for remotely rebooting a flaky printer that would freeze up.  It saved me having to buy a new printer for a couple of years (Eventually it died completely).  I set a schedule to power cycle it a couple of times a day, and I could do it manually if I had to.

[GDS]

I currently use a smart plug to send solar excess energy to the electric backup element of a thermal solar powered water heater. I am planning on changing this to charging a UPS battery backup system instead since on sunny days with excess electrical solar power the thermal solar water heater does not need any help. Unfortunately the excess power feature in the Emporia app has a fixed 400 watt threshold so I am only capturing about half of the available excess energy. I hope we can get an update that allows user specified excess energy thresholds.

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