So I have a Sky box, a bunch of chargers and a TV plugged into a plug bar, now via a KP115.
Uses about 13W when the chargers are doing nothing. So I’ve set a schedule on the plug to leave it off when we’re unlikely to need the TV.
But if I set it to automatic for Equivents, the TV could go off when we’re in the middle of watching something. Also, depending upon which consumption figure Equiwatt uses, I might get almost zero points because the consumption for the last period was nearly zero during a daytime “off” slot". (When it’s possibly shutting down the biggest “parasitic” load left in our home for most of the day.)
I wonder if Equiwatt could:
a) Enable setting KP115 schedules from Equiwatt itself without needing to go to the Kasa app;
b) Enable setting “no downtime” periods in those schedules so Equivents do not switch off the telly during dinner;
c) Take account of the mean standby consumption in awarding points - or peak - instead of only the last period of consumption.
Some good ideas here! We have considered a & b before but ultimately decided that it wasn’t a priority for now. But we may look at this again if there’s a lot of demand for it!
c. is a bit trickier. Ideally the way points are calculated would slightly change based on the type of device, because as you rightly say, the way we do it doesn’t work for every scenario. And we do a little bit of this already for some appliance types. But we do have some things in the roadmap to make this more accurate using ML, and maybe even asking the user to select the device type.
Lots of people must have kitchen TVs, maybe with additional load.
Equiwatters who make the kitchen plug bar subject to Equivents could become unpopular quickly. Same for the living room entertainment system.
Maybe wouldn’t have to have full schedule functionality, just “no Equivents between and ”.
Might have some other uses as well. If compatible with the EV charger API, might be possible to say “accept Equivents, but make sure it’s not between 2am and 4am”, so the EV always has enough for the journey to work?
The fridge and freezer are already on KP115s thanks.
The plugs use about 0.7kW, so they seem worth plugging in to anything using more than a few Watts that can be switched off on a schedule. Regardless of Equivents and points, a 10W constant load is shortly going to cost over £30 a year. So it might even be worth investing in a few more plugs to schedule some downtime when devices are definitely not needed.
(And if enough people did that, peak demand could shrink enough to close another fossil power station or two. It would take a lot of kitchen plug bars to achieve that.)
Pleased to hear you like the idea for a timed opt-in/out. iIfenough people support it, maybe mahen and his team can be persuaded to put it on their backlog.
It was on the backlog at one point, just that there’s so many other things before it now Might put up a poll on here at some point, so we can better priorities these kinds of QOL features!
Did I really type 0.7kW? Sorry, if the plugs used that they would never be worth using. I should have said 0.7 Watts. Much less than most LED light bulbs.
- instead of only the last period of consumption.
Might put up a poll on here at some point, so we can better priorities these kinds of QOL features!