PUT SMART PLUGS ON POWER GUZZLERS

Smart plugs are a cheap investment these days. The most cursory of Amazon searches will reveal devices for around £10 per unit. They could easily pay back that investment within a year if you attach them to devices that smash through electricity.

To give you an example, many people now have home offices at the bottom of the garden or in a converted outbuilding, such as the garage. And many of those people will be relying on electric heaters to keep them warm during the winter months. Electric heaters sap electricity, but you can use smart plugs to ensure wastage is kept to a minimum.

For example, in a home office, you could use the scheduling functions of a smart plug to switch the heater on half an hour before you start work each day, to ensure the office is warm when you start work. You can also set it to switch the appliance off at, say, 6pm, ensuring that even if you’ve accidentally left the heater on at the end of the working day, it will be switched off and not left to heat an empty office.

Smart plugs also let you switch devices on and off remotely. So, if you remember that you’ve left something on halfway around a lunchtime dog walk, you can switch it off via an app on your phone.

Other high-energy devices that you can tame with a smart plug include (paradoxically) air-conditioning units. Just make sure you check the maximum wattage available from any smart plug before buying.

It’s also sensible to get your smart plugs from the same manufacturer to prevent having to deal with multiple apps – although even then there’s no guarantee. We have two different smart plugs from TP-Link that require two different apps. Hard stares all round.