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By Andreas B., Vienna14 September 2026For two years my wife and I had the same argument. The bill went up, she said turn the lights off, I said the lights are LEDs, she said then what is it, and I did not know.
That was the honest answer. I did not know. Nobody does. The bill is one number and the house is forty things.
In June I bought a power strip that meters each socket, with two metered plugs in the same kit. I did not change a single habit for the first month. I just moved the strip around and looked.
Then I changed two things, and the next bill was 23 percent lower. Here is what they were.
For two years my wife and I had the same argument. The bill went up, she said turn the lights off, I said the lights are LEDs, she said then what is it, and I did not know.
That was the honest answer. I did not know. Nobody does. The bill is one number and the house is forty things.
In June I bought a power strip that meters each socket, with two metered plugs in the same kit. I did not change a single habit for the first month. I just moved the strip around and looked.
Then I changed two things, and the next bill was 23 percent lower. Here is what they were.
For two years my wife and I had the same argument. The bill went up, she said turn the lights off, I said the lights are LEDs, she said then what is it, and I did not know.
That was the honest answer. I did not know. Nobody does. The bill is one number and the house is forty things.
In June I bought a power strip that meters each socket, with two metered plugs in the same kit. I did not change a single habit for the first month. I just moved the strip around and looked.
Then I changed two things, and the next bill was 23 percent lower. Here is what they were.
The strip has four sockets and each one shows up in the app as its own line, in watts right now and kilowatt-hours over the month. I put it on the media wall first because that is where the argument usually ended up.
The television drew 0.4 watts off. Fine. The soundbar drew 14 watts off. Not fine. The set-top box drew 11. Between them, with nothing playing, the wall was pulling 26 watts all night, every night.
Fourteen years. Nobody had ever put a meter on it. Why would you? It is a freezer. It hums.
The first change took two minutes. In the app I told the strip to switch off outlets one to three between midnight and seven. The television keeps its outlet because it has to update. The wall now draws about a watt overnight instead of twenty-six.
The second change cost money. We replaced the freezer. The new one is smaller, which we should have done years ago anyway, and it draws about 0.5 kilowatt-hours a day. That is about 127 euros a year less than the old one, so it pays for itself in about three years. One of the two plugs from the kit is on it now, so I know that number rather than believe it.
Two months of looking, two changes, and a bill 27 euros lower. The freezer is most of it.
The strip and the two plugs I ended up with, as a kit
One stayed on the new freezer. The other went on the dehumidifier in the cellar, which turned out to run far more than we thought, so it is now on a schedule. That means the strip can stay on the media wall while the two things on their own keep their own meters. Nothing was wired and nobody had to come round.
What two months of looking was worth
The Power Strip 4 meters four things at once and switches each one off on its own. The two Plug M go on the two appliances you are not sure about, like the freezer in the cellar or the dehumidifier. Together 74.90 EUR against 79.80 bought separately.
Plugs meter what plugs into them; a hardwired water heater, hob or oven is not visible to them.
"Finally got full control and power monitoring for all my appliances. Seamless Home Assistant integration with local control out of the box. Great dashboards, detailed energy flow data, useful automations, and precise metrics to make informed decisions."
"Delivers as advertised. Unfortunately the indication light can't be turned off without turning off the device -1 star"
Four stars and below are left in. The most common small complaint about the plugs is the status light, which cannot be switched off on its own. The most common one about the strip is a small reading on an outlet that is off, which is the strip's own electronics.