When we first built our home I went through this exercise and had it all dialed in nicely but then we purchased a hot tub, and that offset all my efforts and more. Turning off computers has a big impact

Nice. One thing I noticed from monitoring home device usage over the years with Home Assistant (and HACS Powercalc) was how little energy LED bulbs require vs output. Even though my parents homes don't have home automation, during the price hike in energy costs a couple of years ago I got them to make an inventory of their bulbs and I replaced them all with LED equivalents. I took on the upfront cost, but the long term saving for them has been huge (esp replacing halogen bulbs). My own home is pretty efficient and, like yours, it uses automations combined + zigbee buttons so nothing stays on standby, but there was still one big power leach that niggled away at my brain. My main "big" PC, which has an Nvidia GPU for both home work and play is something I use a lot for both remote working and play at night. I justified the cost as it's a tool I use a lot, so why not. On idle it consumes 250+w and when gaming it easily ramps up to 450W+. In the end the "this could be done better" won the fight in my head. We have a headless Lenovo Tiny PC that's used as a low power remote access for when we're away (and to manage some security cameras). So instead of that coming on when not_home, I hooked it up to my monitor and started instead to use it as my daily driver and now only using the big PC in the evening when gaming or for other stuff that properly makes use of the GPU. This one thing is saving us at least £250/yr I bought it years ago from eBay, but if I was to get it again today, it would've paid for itself within 4 months.

500W idle for the house is a lot of power. I currently have a idle load of the house of around 119W with 1 of the biggest power draw of 40W comes from the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro SE with 2 Wifi 6 pro accesspoints. An other high load is the ventilation heatpump for hot water and heat at idle with a power draw of 33W. My server just consumed around 11W at idle, but I do not have a local file store on it. Hope you can figure out to draw less power.

Good to have you back

great video! My guess with the dishwasher is that a capacitor in the smart switch is degrading over time, causing increased EMI emissions that (to your point) interfere with the dishwaser electronics. To test the theory, try powering the dishwasher using an extension lead from a power outlet a few metres away, and put the smart plug on the outlet. Not a permanent solution, but might point to what the problem is.

Fantastic to see such an in-depth dive into truly understanding your energy usage. Top notch video!

Great content as always! Good to have you back man

I see what you did there with your comment about your fridge/freezer power monitoring. Very cool!

Loving the plant lights.

Request for video on how to set up guest and holiday switches for Home Assistant. - Awesome to see your videos returning

I‘m eager diving into the topic of energy optimisation, as we bought an old shed as well recently.

Mate, what a brilliant video! I've regularly been watching yours and a few other known KZfaq channels for home automation. This episode is by far the best value of all I've watched! As any enthusiast, I also love a new gadget or a new automation but most of them are for the fun! whereas this whole video was spot on for an awesome reason! Thank you for sharing all your experiences and ideas! I will definitely make a project of each one that I don't use yet, repurposing smart plugs, meters, etc. On your issue with the dishwasher, have you thought about electromagnetic interference from your smart plug into the dishwasher control board? It is not common but not impossible. to test it, just move the smart plug away from the dishwasher (i.e. use a testing extension cord so it is located a couple of meters away from your dishwasher). If that fixes, you can probably swap by another smart plug that uses other wireless protocols (e.g. ZigBee wifi). " Why would it have only started after 8 months?" possibly due to a change in the frequency/wifi channel if you currently use wifi. good luck! If you feel that this topic generates interest, you could do another chapter focused on the devices that can be used to help with energy monitoring and efficiency (other clamps, all the smart plugs with energy monitoring capability, even smart appliances, etc. ) and also sharing/publishing some of the automation templates or dashboards on that topic that you've found useful. you could even get into solar systems integrations with HA or EV chargers integrations - for example, the phone app called Charge HQ is simple and does a fantastic job of charging EVs with excess from solar via API integration between solar systems and EV chargers rather than letting it go back to the grid.

Thanks for a WOW investigation which help understand more benefits of the automation

Love it, super informative video :)!

Thanks for the suggestions. I have implemented most of them. As an aside I notice you have Heatmisser. We have an 8 zone gas powered variant. There are a couple of things I have done to optimise gas usage when we are away. First I have changed the Away temp in the zones to 7c. There is a bug in the android app, so you need to get them to do it or use a different app. Additionally I have removed all scheduling from Heatmisser and moved it in to Home assistant using a combination of a calendar with repeating events and some automations to change the target temps. It works really well and means HA can tightly control the house heating, especially when we are away. Out of interest my home base level is 4Kwh per day for electricity. This covers our internet, home assistant server and smart plugs, switches.

Put the towel racks on a humidity sensor. Once it goes past a certain humidity level, turn on the towel rack for an hour.

I've used Tapo p110 WiFi smart plugs with energy monitoring to smarten up my dishwasher. I have Home Assistant switch the plug on when the night rate electricity starts at 2am. So I just have to start a wash and then tell Alexa to turn off the plug a few seconds in. Then at 2am the wash will properly start when the plug is turned back on. Very basic but very useful. I also use Home Assistant with the power monitoring of the plug to announce that the dishwasher is finished so someone can unload it. Not very useful at 4am, but it is great when doing ad-hoc washes during the day or evening.

Would definitely love to see that morning routine video!

Very useful video, thanks!

Interesting video, I have a solar array on my farm. I’m going to watch your video on monitoring energy usage, it would be interesting to set something similar up.

Math, science, and magic. Love it!

I love this video and gained so many great ideas for my smart home, thanks for that! How did you link your solar power to Home Assistant?

Nice and some good ideas. Towel warmers are really a first world problem!!! "When I saw young ..." :) Dry yourself in the shower enclosure. The perception of heat stays for a while after you turn off the hot water. Stepping out of the shower gives you an immediate sharp temperature change! Give it a try.

I really like how this RGB lights changes to green when solar energy is "wasted" by exporting to grid and it's time to use it for something. I think I'll borrow it for my system in the future.

Great video, that base load is a killer! Did a similar survey for our house, and frustrated to discover there was no one big 'thing' that I could turn off over night to save some power. I think the best candidate was the TV antenna booster, but even that was less than 10W. The feedback on the energy usage is an absolute brilliant idea, getting 'buy in' from everyone in the house is key to energy saving, keeping it simple Green - good, Red - Bad, also great. I had an old Squeezebox music player with a nice bright VFD display showing the energy generated / imported, which worked really well. However my family did struggle with the scale of the numbers, like "look wow we are generating 300 units, best put the washing on". I'd be wary of that switch, the relay may be shot and not closing properly, drawing 3KW across it in that state could cause a fire. One of my biggest concerns with getting smart switches off Amazon that are not quite as good as advertised.

What I do for my lights since I live on my own is have 1 master switch function, that turns off ANY lights that are on in the rest of the house if I turn the bedroom light OFF, from my bed. This saves the headache of finding a light still ON, when I come back later [only 2 exceptions are the smart light switches that are connected to a light with build in motion sensor [toilet/hallway]] For heating I have it set so that I don't use the climate panel buttons but my own to turn on the HEAT. I use custom buttons that are connected to a automation I can disable/enable trough a childlock. it can also only run during the winter. to prevent accidentally turning it on in the dead of summer finding your house at a TOASTY 50C. and the heater running at FULL power. Still optimizing a few things more like smart blinds to prevent draft from the windows.

Some humidity sensors in the bathrooms would help with the control of the towel rails. I am thinking of adding some to my HA install to help refine the control of our MVHR system

Thanks for the nice overview. Please let us know what kind of switches you use for Washer & Dryer. Both appliances use more than 2,500 Watts peak and so shelly Smart Plugs are not usable. Also would like to know how you switch on the Washer & Dryer, as most have Start-buttons to press. I have older Miele appliances and cannot start them just electrically. Thanks in advance for some insights.

Im looking at buying an Emporia Vue, got a few of their plugs too

Very useful!

The reason the dishwasher stopped working with the smart plug is probably the smart plugs power got real dirty and dirty power is a thing that creates unusual stuff like that. Dishwashers are hard on power with the booster heating and the way it switches. One in the same circuit as a standard refrigerator wreaks havoc on it, that happened to me when some restoration guys were stupid. I've seen "perfectly good" power supplies mess with computer motherboards in ways that make no sense. Thanks for the video you gave me a solution to a problem I have.

Thank you for video. And hello from Ukraine🙂

If you have smart shades, consider raising them to let more sunlight in if you are heating the house. Likewise, consider lowering them when you are cooling the house.

Hi, great video. Would a water sensor in the shower linked to towel rail minimise power usage? I’m not sure if a towel would warm up in the time it takes to have a shower but it would accommodate showers at any time.

Thanks for the energy plug recommendation - those local bytes plugs must be the best kept secret lol. Just bought 3 - you need an affiliate link lol

Our towel warmer is linked to the shower light and fan. It does turn on on a timer prior to shower time. But it only turns on for the extended period after a shower to dry the towels if the shower light and fan were both turned on for more than 2 minutes, and then the light is turned off. The fan is on an hour timer after this sequence and so is the towel warmer.

Good information. But that part of you putting the washing in the machine had me for a second 😂

I've had more than a couple of smart plugs that have gone a bit wonky and decided to flick the power off and on, randomly. Seems to happen on plugs that I'm using for monitoring power use, and never switched off, so the relay is always on. Not sure if it's the relay coil "burning out" from being on all the time or something else. If yours was doing that during a cycle, it would certainly affect the dishwashing. We really need a non-relay power monitoring device

Does your elecrtricity meter have a P1 port? If not, have you considered asking your electricity provider if they could install a new meter that has one? Even if it has one, you might have to ask your provider to turn the port on. Mine has, so I asked them to turn the port on, connected a RJ12 cable to the port, ordered a little device that was basically an RJ12 socket on a circuit board, connected an ESP8266 to it, installed ESPHome, and from then on, all my meter readings are stored in Home Assistant. And while the device I made was a kludge that required a bit of soldering, there are several ready to use devices you can buy, that plug into the P1 port and work with Home Assistant out of the box. Also, does your "holiday mode" do any of those old tricks like having lights on for a few hours in the evening to make it look like someone's home? I guess you could set it to move your curtains a few times a day too...

Great video Alan. The smart plugs how accurate are they? I have some that overestimate the voltage saying I have 245 to 250 v all the time. This will then under estimate the power usage. I have been using the Kassa Tp Link KP115 ones and they look to be closer to the real value.

4:30 it's because they fail at some point. Same problem with these plugs here and in the end you could not turn them off and on again with the phone anymore.

Good way to store solar power is in water heater. If you insulate it well or buy a good quality one, you can store warm water for days and use the preheated water as input to the gas furnace so i doesnt have to heat up the water as much. Or if the math works out, get water heater with integrated heat pump (much cheaper than actuall heat pump for outside of the house). It cools the outside (like fridge but other way around) and heats the water inside with much better CoP. It can be an issue if you have it in small room which will get cold, but if you put it in the same room as the furnace, you can turn the waste heat of furnace into warm water. It sounds complicated, but we both love home assistant, so nothing is too complicated :) Edit: By having the small heat pump you can get much more of your small solar panel array, that you cant expand. In my country (Czechia), you can get power billing by the hour with smart power meter (from power company) and even plan when to heat the water, so it might be cheaper than using gas, but that depends on prices available to you. Here it sometimes get even in to negative price per kWh. They even tell you what the prices will be for next 24h. Anyways, love your channel. I would love some videos about user friendly no app automations and heat schedules in HA.

For server power usage, have a look at tuned. This should reduce power usage without affecting performance too much. You should be able to create an initial profile with powertop.

My house uses around 80 watts at idle. My total power draw for a day is 2.8 kwh all in including the fridge which is around the 400w per day mark. I did a lot of work finding out what drew power at idle or standby and pulled it down via smart switching if it’s idle pull is more than the consumption of the smart switch. I do have an even lower power mode if I am away for any length of time as well.

About the towel rails - if you use a water flow sensor or a leak detector to determine when someone is having a shower, maybe you could use that to automate turning on the towel rails afterwards. Then it doesn't matter what time of day you have a shower, and it allows for not turning them on if there's no need.

My smart plugs also started playing up similarly to yours, I figured they just aren’t designed for the spikey surges (3kw) of electricity.

Hi Alan, many thanks for a very informative piece. I appreciate (living in Leeds) how little of that Strange Orange Globe we see in the sky, which obviously affects your solar input - given that output "money back" is low , how about a battery system ? I I have no solar myself, having to live in a Wrinklies Stalag, so my observations are all from watching and listening, not using. I did take note that your wine cooler is using so much, strange but could simply be a bad buy. Washing (dish and clothes) could possibly be improved with better research, but I would wait until you actually need to change, it's all about cost at the end of the day. I find your power monitoring very much "eye opening", informative and note worthy. Thanks again.

I've never heard of a "towel rail" before. If I were automating it I'd turn it on when there's motion detected in the shower. You may have a more regimented day than I do but I haven't showered on a schedule since I quit playing organized sports.

Can you do a video comparing inverter back up UPS systems please?

I'm 100% off the grid/solar with no utilities for 50 miles or more. I use home automation to reduce the amount of electricity and match my usage with available sunshine. My various hubs and devices draw less than 75 watts total. Very minimal

Which Wled Controller and LEDs are you using in plants..looking pretty cool

The only thing i have heard is to use a humidity sensor in the bathroom to turn towel rails on or off that could possibly be better than your scheduled turn off after shower. Thanks for sharing.

Check your smart plug amp rating for dishwasher . That could be reason for your problem . Either it’s not supplying enough amp or it’s broke . Since It was working and now not . I would focus on the smart plug

Please make a video about the power devices, more details about the devices.

@HomeAutomatoinGuy You just inadvertently justified having home energy storage (batteries) when talking about net metering: or "why you should always buy battery storage if you are buying solar panels."

I put my heated towel rack on a humidity sensor and if the light is turned on in the bathroom. I'm ok using a non- heated towel when I shower.

Mulțumim!

Keep your wine fridge full (but not over full) to keep power costs down. An empty fridge loses more "cold" when you open the door compared to a full one.

Can you share the automation for the plant wleds please?

Great video I’d like to hear how you automated your wake up/ morning routine

I use a power provider that passes on real time wholesale rates and one of my biggest power users is the pool pump which is about 1.3kw for up to 8 hours a day. I use a node red flow to use forecasts to determine when the cheapest time of day will be to run it and automatically turn it on and off during the day to achieve this. I have nearly halved the cost of running the pump

You need to fill up that wine cooler, even if it's with water bottles as the mass will help use less power once it has cooled down.

2:25 i see you have miele appliances. do they have miele at home? do you use it? does it require an internet connection? 10:08 isn't there a better way to control those towel heaters? i'm thinking some kind of sensor (a temperature and humidity sensor?) that detects when someone has a shower and then turns the towel heaters on to dry the towels. do you have an exhaust fan in your bathroom? a fan will get rid of the warm humid air in the bathroom, and then that air has to be replaced by cold outside air which needs to be heated up which requires energy. that's why i think a dehumidifier would be a better option.

I found that one of my smart plugs was disconnecting from WiFi every so often and clicking the relay off and on again when it reconnected. Sometimes this was long enough for device to reset. Did wonder what the clicking noise was..

Very illuminating. I'm now sat in the dark:

Great vid! But holy heck a 500w base load is high!

@HomeAutomationGuy I really can't stand wall warts (smart plugs). Have you investigated actual wall outlets with power monitoring?

It makes me realise I can probably move some plugs about to turn more of my audio visual equipment off. must remember to leave the Sky Q box and network switch on though.

I had a similar experience with my dishwasher. The smart plug actually killed it. To make that smart I just ended up using those little button presser robots

Are the smart plugs you’re using WiFi rather than zigbee? If so what made you go for these over a zigbee based smart plug?

I also don’t understand it but I had the identical issues with our Miele dishwasher. Once I removed the smart plug, it went back to working perfectly again.

Dishwasher, just replace relay in the plug and problem should definitely disappear 😊.

Be interesting if you put in a air sourced heat pump, got rid of gas and see how you automate all that

Can you please share the code for the notification? I can't get it work ;)

😊👍

Interesting, I am running our towel dryer for 3 hours each cycle. This will make me shorten that time.

Why dont you just set one automarion to turn on the towel heater when the humidity in the bathroom gets to certain level and then falls to a certain point, rather than doing it based on times ? I hate time based automarions. Like for example, why not set heating based on presence? Finished. Thats what ive done for all my infrared heating panels for all the rooms in the house

You haven't properly described what was happening to your dishwasher, but I am guessing it was simply... it wasn't finishing and you didn't know why. I have encountered similar situation in case of clothes washer and I know the reason. Most smart plugs are rated for max of 2400W (240V 10A) and dishwasher is awfully close to that during heating. So in my case it was overcurrent protection kicking in, switching the plug on and off with me returning and wondering what has happened. There could be plenty of reasons why overcurrent wasn't initially meddling, but started over time. My recommendation would be to switch to bulkier smart "plug" (something like sonoff pow) rated for 25A+ and check.

500W on idle ? my house is 4+1 over 120m and i am idling on 80W, that's mainly freezer and refrigerator. 500W is where everything is working during the day... LEDs everywhere, TV not running on max brightness.. but 500W idle ? maaaan

6 access points? What square footage? Seems like a mansion lol

500W is a lot. That's enough to grow plants in your loft. I put in automation to save electricity. Never paid for an electrician, that's a huge waste of money. Better to do it properly yourself any day

Lots of Miele appliances...not cheap your living...

Spend thousands to save a few hundreds?

IMHO: About dishwasher - smart plug just can't handle load and with time contacts is overheat and loose possibility to provide constant power. If it's plug contact pair - you can see it changed colour, if it is relay - just test on high load.

I‘m eager diving into the topic of energy optimisation, as we bought an old shed as well recently.