I've been doing a little power monitoring of devices to see what they cost me per month to run and how I can reduce my overall power bill. I had one oil radiator heater in my bedroom that was costing (estimated based on 15 days of data) $29.17 per month. In the winter, that's an average of 1/10th of my power bill. Replacing it with a Mica Heater and some automation, heating the bedroom is now costing me $7.91 per month... and it's been colder here since swapping out the heater.
I have another heater that I found the standby draw (I assume waiting for IR remote control signal) alone is about half what the bedroom heater is costing per month. Anyway, that got me interested in standby power used of some devices.
!@#$% sale at The Smartest House and I ended up with another 5 of the Zooz Zen 15s (along with 2 Zen20 power strips and 2 Zen25 double-plugs) to add to Hubitat. As I was unpacking them, I had a strange thought (for anyone else but me): "I need to see how much standby power the Zen15 uses." How? Plug a Zen15 into a Zen 15 and monitor the usage. Simple enough. But not good enough. Is it pretty consistent? So as an excuse ... ummm... "valid reason" not to install them and thereby having to move kitchen appliances around at 1 am, I just plugged all 5 into one another after including them in Hubitat, zeroed out the readings and let them gather energy usage of the string.
So what is the estimated energy cost per month for the Zooz Zen 15 itself here in Md TN? 25 cents.... for 4 of them.
@agnes.zooz Does this qualify as the most trivial/silly usage of the Zen25 that the Zooz team has ever seen?
I just added the first 220V sensor to get an idea of how much power is used by the two (ancient) floor space heaters in use here. I'll be adding monitoring for a lot more devices in the near future.... just probably not more smart devices themselves. There's just too many things to get working on the Hubitat... including more Hubitats.
If you are on the hunt for devices using a lot of power, I would suggest you look at the P3 Power meter.
Its reasonably accurate and gives you watts and watt-hours. Very easy to use but no radio just a plug in meter.
Haha I wish! We actually get asked about the standby power of Z-Wave devices and it's generally minimal but now we can share the estimated energy cost so thanks for that @bjcowles that was a valid question since the LED indicator WILL be responsible for a good few cents on that bill. And there are other variables too, like how many devices is the ZEN15 routing signal for (how much activity does the Z-Wave radio get)... I mean, that's a dangerous door you've opened here...
Even more dangerous is the question which of the devices I just bought (Zen15, Zen20, Zen25) has the most accurate power usage readings for low amperage devices? This could be a very deep rabbit hole if one were so inclined.
Bad news... the power cost (for the 4 units) has gone up a whole penny per month with a little more time. Woe is me. That fraction of a penny per device might break me. (We shall not discuss the cost of the the 8 Zen 15 units to begin with even though 5 were bought on sale.)
Sadly though, it's time for this silliness to end and actually start deploying (at least most) of the Zen 15 devices tonight.
