This summer, you might be disappointed about having to fork out more than the usual amount for your electricity bill. You are not alone. With rising energy prices and increased equipment usage, this is inevitable. By understanding how much power each device in your home consumes, you can make informed choices to save money.

The trend of measuring power consumption at an appliance level was first popularized by Kill-A-Watt in the early 2000s in the US. Kill-A-Watt, which is word play for kilowatt, is a device that measures the amount of electricity used by various household electric appliances. All you need to do is plug the device into the wall outlet and then plug any equipment into the Kill-A-Watt and voil� ? you get to see the amount of power drawn by the equipment in real-time. You could then measure the units consumed per hour and arrive at a number for the month. Unfortunately, this is not available in India and even if you manage to get hold of one, it is not compatible with the 220V used in Indian homes. Additionally, this requires some effort to manually measure each and every equipment and make calculations.

Fortunately, there are several WiFi-enabled smart plugs with energy monitoring features available for purchase on Indian e-commerce websites. Several brands such as Qubo from Hero Group, TP-Link, Wipro, Havells and Philips offer a variety of these products at very reasonable prices compared to similar products sold abroad. Prices start at Rs. 699 for a 10A smart plug and Rs. 899 for a 16A version. While the 10A version is suitable for small appliances such as your laptop charger, kettle or television. The 16A version is suitable for large appliances such as geysers, microwave ovens and even air-conditioners. This is very convenient and simple to use and more accurate than the manual method. 

Qubo Smart Plugs to monitor power consumption, set up schedules

My PC at home is on for several hours a day and I decided to check if that was causing my power consumption and electricity bill to go up. I ordered the 10A and 16A version of the Qubo Smart plugs. I use their Car Dash Cam and have had a good experience so far, so i decided to try their smart plugs. Most of their devices are Made in India and mobile apps are available on both iOS and Android.

The setup process is straightforward. You install the smart plug into your wall socket, launch the Qubo App on your smartphone and start the pairing process. You need to search for the device and pair it with your account. You can now go ahead and connect the equipment to the smart plug to use all the features. You can set up schedules, countdowns and connect Alexa as well. You get to see the energy consumption in kWh for the day and for the month with a nice little graph. You get other relevant data such as current, voltage and total energy consumption. The best part is that it works over the internet, so you can control your equipment at home even when you are outside. You could turn on your AC at home before you arrive, set up a schedule to turn on your geyser every morning at 7 am for 20 minutes or turn off your refrigerator when you are away from home on a vacation.

The app shows data in real-time, so I was able to see that my AC consumes significantly lower power when operated at 26 degrees compared to 22 degrees. These numbers add up over time and over a period of 30 days, the savings are significant.

Wipro smart extension board for multiple sockets, auto cut-off

If you plan to connect multiple appliances, Wipro even offers a power strip priced at Rs.1890 with 4 sockets and packs features such as energy monitoring, auto cut-off, scheduling and ability to control your devices through Alexa and Google Assistant.

Ohm Assistant for real-time energy monitoring via mobile app

You could also go one step further and decide to monitor your consumption directly at the source. There are products that can be installed within the electricity distribution box inside your home. One such product is Ohm Assistant from SustLabs which was incubated at IIT Bombay. Ohm Assistant is a real-time energy monitoring product for homes, and it requires a professional installation by a qualified electrician. The device is known as Ohm Bot and takes about 30 minutes to install and once set up, your electricity consumption data is available on your smartphone over WiFi. The Ohm Assistant App is available on both Android and iOS and can be accessed from the website as well.

We often tend to assume that devices do not consume power when left in standby and not in use. Devices such as televisions, monitors and UPS devices do consume a small amount of power when idle, and if they are idle for a long period of time, these numbers do add up and end up costing money. It is also highly recommended to operate your devices in energy-saver mode whenever possible.

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