In a world of rising electricity bills, a lot of us are looking for easy ways to get a bit more control over our energy usage.
A smart plug is a practical step between older appliances and newer, energy-efficient, smart appliances and whole home electrification. If you’re comfortable using apps on a phone, or even a remote for the TV, you’ll be able to use smart plugs to monitor, schedule, and control appliances and devices in your home with no problem.
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What is a Smart Plug?
A smart plug is a device that turns nearly any electric device or appliance into one you can control and monitor remotely with a phone, tablet, computer, or voice control. This gives you the ability to schedule, monitor, or simply cut the power to devices the smart plug is connected to.
The potential benefits of smart plugs are energy efficiency, convenience, and safety. Smart plugs let you monitor your home’s energy consumption, cut off devices not in use, or use them at the most efficient times to save energy and money. A smart plug can be a convenient way to schedule tasks, such as turning on a coffee maker or kettle, to help with the morning rush out the door. A smart plug might also be an important safety device that lets you remotely turn off a curling iron because you were rushing to work.
How Smart Plugs Work
Smart plugs are made to be simple and pretty universal to operate. You plug an appliance, say a coffee maker, into a smart plug, and the smart plug into a normal outlet. Then you need wifi and the smart plug’s app.
A quick note to check is the amp rating of the smart plug. Most smart plugs are fine to handle the amperage of most home appliances. If you are planning on using a smart plug on an air conditioner, space heater, attic fan, or group of multiple electronics, such as with a home theater or office, you may need a smart plug capable of handling more amps.
Once everything’s connected, and you’re up to speed with the app, there are many uses to smart plugs. You can plug a video game console into a smart plug to turn it fully off instead of letting it run on standby mode and use vampire power. You might have other, say, educational, reasons to control the time spent on video games from anywhere.
Remote control or scheduling could prevent fire hazards around the house; for example, you can schedule a space heater to be on for a while, but not through the night.
Benefits of Smart Plugs
Benefits of smart plugs include safety, security for your family, energy monitoring, helping the environment, and saving money.
Safety: Smart plugs give you the ability to stop a fire or a burn in the kitchen before it happens. You can turn off an iron you accidentally left on or double-check a stove is off if children are around.
Personal security: If you’re getting home after dark, you can schedule or remotely control lights to be on when you arrive.
Energy monitoring: You can monitor your energy usage for specific devices, or have multiple smart plugs to cover whole systems, whole rooms, or the whole home. This may be especially helpful if you live with a utility with peak and off-peak rate programs and you want to use less electricity during peak periods.
Greener living: If smart plugs help you save energy, you’ll be using fewer fossil fuels and emitting less carbon, helping the environment, and fighting climate change.
Savings: You’re could save money by using less energy from the utility company or making your renewable solar energy go farther. If you’ve gone solar, smart plugs might help you store or send more electricity to the grid.
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Smart Plug Features
Smart plugs vary in sophistication and features.
One important feature is compatibility. Most smart plugs can function in a standalone setting, but gain features when connected to a smart home ecosystem such as Alexa or Google Home. To fully use features such as voice commands, automations, or syncing, smart plugs may need to be compatible with a smart system. Make sure what you’re buying works with what you already have.
Some smart plugs can notify you about power outages, usage alerts, or when a device is turned on or off. Smart plugs typically have the ability to auto-reconnect after a power or network outage. Most can work with voice control commands. Some have syncing or grouping control, the ability to group multiple smart plugs for connected, simultaneous control. With a single command you could turn on the heat, lights, and coffee maker first thing in the morning.
There are also outdoor-designed smart plugs that are weather resistant which can be used with gates, lights, security systems, Halloween or Christmas decorations, pool systems, and more.
How to Choose the Best Smart Plug
You can’t tell much from one smart plug to another by just looking at them. So how do you choose?
Let’s start with one necessity. You want a smart plug compatible with the devices you already have. Not to get into the Apple vs. Google vs. Amazon debates, but if you happen to be an iPhone loyalist, make sure the smart plug you’re getting has an iPhone app. If you have an Apple HomeKit set up at home, make sure your device can slot into your ecosystem.
It may be a good idea to check out a smart plug’s app or user interface. Does it seem to be on your tech level? Will it be pretty easy to understand and use quickly? If the app is confusing, or it’s easy to make a mistake, are you getting the ease and pros of the smart plugs?
More options to check may be the amp load the smart plug is safe with and if you need a smart plug with specific purposes, such as for outdoor or pool uses.
Make sure a smart plug fits your goals, whether that’s simple remote control from your phone, scheduling, energy monitoring, or coordinated automations with other smart devices in your home.
Smart plugs can be part of a larger journey to save money, use less carbon-based power, be energy independent, and have the safety of your own renewable electricity. If you are interested in learning more about home solar power, start with our solar savings calculator or contact form.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a smart plug do?
A smart plug turns nearly any electric device or appliance into one you can control remotely with a phone, tablet, computer, or voice control. This gives you the ability to schedule, control, or cut the power to an appliance via the smart plug. You can also monitor energy usage and efficiency.
How is energy monitoring helpful?
Smart plugs can monitor energy usage in one appliance or up to your whole home. With this information, you can save money by scheduling appliances to run at off-peak hours, for example. If a video game console is usually left in standby mode, maybe for days at a time, you can turn it off and save on vampire energy usage.
Can smart plugs save you money?
Yes. Smart plugs by themselves do not save electricity or money. You can save money by using them to make your home more energy efficient.
Will smart plugs increase your electricity bill?
If you used smart plugs around your house and made no changes to energy usage, habits, or patterns, yes, the smart plugs would add a nominal amount to your electricity bill. If you use the monitoring, scheduling, and remote control to improve how you’re using energy, smart plugs should help you decrease your electricity bill.
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Andrew GiermakWriter and EditorAndrew joined Palmetto in Charlotte in August 2024. He’s been a writer in journalism, then in business, going back to almost the 20th century. He’s lived in Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia again, and now North Carolina for the last 12 years. He likes golf. Is he good at it? Not so much.
