Smart Plugs & Switches

Smart plugs and switches put an existing appliance under schedule, remote or sensor control without rewiring it. They are the lowest-commitment thing in this branch and the easiest place to find out whether automation is worth extending.

The office cases that actually earn their cost are dull ones: water heaters and dispensers that run all night for nobody, signage and display lighting that stays on all weekend, and equipment somebody has to physically walk over to reset. A plug with energy monitoring will also tell you which of those is worth addressing, which is often not the one people assume.

Load rating is where these go wrong. A plug rated for a lamp will not carry a heater or a pump, and a switch rated for a resistive load will not carry a motor for long. Check the appliance rating against the plug rating rather than assuming a socket-shaped device handles anything a socket does.

In-wall switches are the tidier answer for anything permanent, and they need a neutral at the switch position - worth checking before ordering, since many buildings here do not have one.

What happens after a power cut should also be decided deliberately: some devices restore their previous state and some default to off, and for a fridge that is not a small difference.