#efergy

Efergy Ego WiFi Socket - viewing appliance power usage on your mobile phone

Because Ellies has no plans to import this plug into South Africa (it has to be retooled and SABS tested) in the short term, I imported the UK version myself direct from Efergy (who were very helpful and couriered it within about 3 days).

I have mixed feelings about this plug. I really like the concept but feel that more could have been done with it. I also struggled quite a while to get it connected to my WiFi. The tip here is firstly create a separate Guest network so that these devices are separate for your normal LAN devices, then secondly remember to log into that network with your phone when you do the setup. They do provide a secondary AP method of setting it up, which is what I used in the end.

What it does do is you can connect multiple of these devices to your phone and name them by appliance they are connected to, and even group them eg. a few for lights, or for TV's, etc. It gives a nice graph view of the power usage over time (which the older plug did not do at all). You can switch the appliance off or on remotely from your phone, or you can set timers based on different days (great for if you are going away and want it to look like someone is at home). It will also learn usage patterns of an appliance such as a TV, so that it will learn that the TV is never in use from 11pm through to 5pm the next day, and it can switch it off completely at the wall and save standby energy consumption. So actually tons of potential here for power saving.

On the perceived shortcomings / suggestions for improvements: I was really hoping it would connect to the Efergy Engage Hub and thereby be able to see the energy usage per appliance over time in the same dashboard. This does not appear to be the case even though it has WiFi capability. My Engage Hub does not detect this device. You also have to be in the house with your phone in order to access the device and control, so no remote access which is a great pity because there goes the idea of being able to check if you left and appliance on, and being able to switch it off. I just feel more could have been done to integrate this with the Engage Hub. The graphs do not show any scale but if you touch a point on the graph it will show the reading for that point. Also no stats are visible for peak or minimum power drawn by that appliance. The graph is showing averages over the periods so is not an indication of peak power used (which is useful if you are planning around capacity for an inverter).

In fairness to Efergy though there is a product coming still that is called the Efergy Engage Socket which does state it will connect to the Engage Hub. Maybe though the Ego and the Socket just need to be clearly contrasted on the website so that consumers know that the Ego Smart Socket is really connecting locally to a mobile phone and is ideal if you do not have a Smart Hub (and you can connect a lot of these devices), while the Engage Socket will allow for 5 devices to be connected in the future to your Engage Hub (and it will require an Engage Hub).

So in summary if you have a few appliances that you would like to monitor and you do not have a Smart Hub, then this Ego Smart Socket is the way to go but expect to only manage the devices whilst you are in the house, or have setup the timers.

Note I bought this product on my own initiative and fully paid for it and the shipping. I received no benefit or influence from Efergy at all.

#efergy #greenenergy #monitoring