I needed to save money. The answer was a €10 smartplug

A warning. This is an article about a plug, and a personal-finance article, but I am not an expert in plugs or personal finance. I know how to use a plug, but I am not even a personal-finance dilettante. I would be the first to admit that I’m about as far as you can get from a savvy, penny-wise householder. Before this summer I had no idea what our electricity bill came to. I read all the advice and still failed to shop around for deals, unless it was on the Zara app. People said “Switch your provider” and I heard “Death by paperwork”.

Like most of us, I’ve had to learn to get better, fast.

A few factors have spurred me down this spending road to Damascus. They include the energy crisis and the realisation that I am now in my mid-40s and there is no further postponing of fully fledged adulthood. I needed to save money. The final, and most compelling, factor is that I am a sucker for a new gadget, any new gadget. I once wrote a whole column about my wild enthusiasm for my new cordless vacuum cleaner, and I have no regrets. In fact it was probably the thing I’ve written that I got most emails about ever.

I’ve become obsessed with checking the app multiple times a day, even when the house is empty and there’s not much action on the electricity front, texting my husband hourly updates

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. This column is an ode to a €10 smartplug.

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The Ninja Air Fryer, previous holder of the title of all-time best purchase ever (article on that to come, obviously), has been usurped in my affections by this aesthetically nondescript but devilishly smart plug, whose range of abilities includes switching devices on and off remotely and pairing with Alexa and Google Home, neither of which I have, but I didn’t let that put me off.

[ Jennifer O'Connell: ‘My obsession with household appliances had reached problematic levels’ ]

This plug is, the packaging claims, “ideal for controlling hard to reach sockets, eg Christmas tree lights”. That is exciting, certainly, but none of it comes remotely near the best reason to buy one, in my view. Because it also measures how much electricity individual appliances use and tracks how much you’re spending on them. As a control freak, I find this deeply appealing. I decided there was no need to get ourselves involved in any of the confusion or potential pitfalls of smart meters when we can just monitor our own usage.

There are several of these types of plugs on the market. The version we have is the TCP smart wifi plug, which normally cost €15-€20 but we got on sale for €10 (from DID Electrical.) Actually, it’s so good we got four of them. (If they’re all sold out, it was me.)

[ ‘The campervan broke my heart.’ Lockdown purchases we wish we’d never made ]

To use it, you download the TCP Smart app from Google or Apple and then follow the instructions to link it to your wifi. Plug it into the socket and then plug in whatever device you want to measure. You can programme the cost per kWh that you pay for electricity, and the app will do the rest.

Now for the personal-finances bit. My provider is Bord Gáis. Since the most recent increase, on October 2nd, the full rate on the Urban 24hr package is 48.19c per kilowatt hour. My husband, who is slightly less appalling at these things than me, had the foresight to switch providers over the summer, so we are on a discounted rate for the next 10 months. Before the Black October price hikes we paid 19.84c per kilowatt hour – now it’s 31.81c.

As I sit here, I can see that it has cost four cent today to run, even though it hasn’t been switched on, which means an investigation and full committee hearing later to find out who left it on standby

I’ve become obsessed with checking the app multiple times a day, even when the house is empty and there’s not much action on the electricity front, texting my husband hourly updates. I don’t get out a lot.

To no one’s real surprise, the appliance that’s costing us most to run of those we’ve measured so far is our big old Samsung American-style fridge-freezer. Its average electricity use per day (measured over 10 days) was 2.16 kWh. At the full rate, that would have meant a spendy €31.23 per month. But as we’re on the discounted rate, it was €20.63 for the month, which isn’t a bad return for a big fridge feeding a hungry family of five, including teenagers who seem to snack constantly.

[ Conor Pope: Here’s how much it costs to take a shower or make a cup of tea ]

Our Whirlpool 6th Sense washing machine proved reassuringly efficient and almost disappointingly cheap, in the sense that I now may need to use it more. To wash two loads this week – one an ecocycle that lasted four hours and raised the temperature very slowly to 30 degrees; the other a quick, one-hour 30-degree cycle – it used 0.23Kwh of electricity at a cost of 7c at the discounted rate. As both of these were done on the same day, I’m planning to investigate further to figure out which is actually cheaper, but I suspect it’s not the “ecocycle”, which I think is part of a conspiracy by Bill Gates to turn us all into sheeple. (I don’t really. But I don’t entirely trust it for taking four hours, when I know it can wash my clothes in one.)

[ Will my smart meter cost me more and can I make it work for me? ]

I also now know that my small attic home office costs me about 32c a day to heat using a new, smart infrared panel that maintains the room at a steady 24 degrees.

The big American TV, which came home with us from California a few years ago and runs on a step-down power converter, used an average of 0.69Kwh per day over five days recently, which cost 33 cent at the current standard rate, or 22 cent at our discounted rate. As I sit here, I can see that it has cost 4c today to run, even though it hasn’t been switched on, which means an investigation and full committee hearing later to find out who left it on standby. Luckily, I can turn it off without leaving my seat.

The most expensive appliance is the one we try to use least often – the tumble dryer. For the purposes of research only, and because it was raining relentlessly, I used it this week to quickly dry a small load of towels. It used 2.54 kWh, or €1.22 at the full rate. With the discount, we paid 81c, which is cheaper than buying new towels, but not by much. Luckily, tumble drying is definitely a discretionary bit of energy expenditure, unlike chilling your food, say, or other vital things like steaming your hair. (You want a column on my beloved Steam Pod, you say? Happy to oblige.)

The next stop for the smartplug are the Ninja Air Fryer and the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and I just hope we don’t have to make tough choices.