I want get an idea of what certain things are costing electricity wise monthly. My electric bill is increasing and want to figure out what is the biggest expense. I see lots of posts about ongoing monitoring and more sophisticated solutions that I don’t really want. I have a samsung Smartthings plug that shows me energy usage. But I want something to show me energy usage over a period of time. If not the Smartthings plug I can get something else. I basically want to have a device to use on the washer for a month and get the electric usage. Then move it to a space heater and get the data. And then to the on demand water heater etc etc etc. any thoughts? What device should I get to capture data on a monthly basis? Any apps that make sense?
Any device that provides energy metering capabilities will provide you data, BUT they don’t “store” data. GE’s Zigbee wall plugs are good devices and report energy very often vs. just every 5 minutes or so. In fact, any Zigbee metering switch reports energy usage immediately vs most of the zwave devices available today (without a custom DTH). There are reasons why, but that’s a separate topic…
Anyway, those sophisticated solutions are the only way to get what you want for monthly usage analysis. I think the simplest solution would be to send data to Google Sheets via this SmartApp:
Thanks John. I will check it out. I want to use a smart plug and just move it around on a monthly basis to get a sense of what power is used by specific devices. I assume the SmartThings smartplug would work with this. If so I will give it a shot.
They will, and I have several of the older ones, and their Iris counterparts. I have them on any and all appliances where I don’t already have the GE ones. I use to use the Simple Event Logger, but I was capturing a ton of data and never really took the time to analyse the data.
Ron what plugs do you use? That would be a simple solution for me. Keep the plug in a location for a month and measure the total. Then reset and move to a new location. Rinse and repeat.
I use mostly Iris plugs with a custom DTH but they are hard to find as Lowe’s discontinued them a while back. You can still find them on Fleabay, I meant EBay. However, most of the energy monitor plugs have a custom DTH that will give you the same info.
The Zooz power strips and Aeon power strips look like this but doesn’t have a running day count in this DTH.
Have you considered simply using a KILL-A-WATT (or similar) device ? If you want to move it around and know how much a device is costing you in electricity, it is a great device to have on hand. While it does not integrate with ST, it would appear to suit your needs very well.
Agreed. I used a couple of these for years before I got into all of the HA stuff. Really helped me track down some hungry equipment. Old deep freezer, old small refrigerator, AVR that was draining 45 watts on standby, etc…
Ok so I went to the iris archive box and found a iris smart plug. It reads the energy consumption and power meter. This may be a stupid question but how do I take this data and figure my costs Want to get an idea of what it costs per device per month.
Take a look at your power bill. It should include your ‘electricity rate’ ($ per kiloWatt hour). Take that number and multiply it by the number of kWh the outlet reports.
