How to get free Smart Plugs, sort of.

In the not too distant future, most households should have the ability to generate and store their own power supply. Solar Panels installed on rooftops, which drip feed energy into a wall-mounted battery will supply power to the home. This is a principle recently brought into alternative-reality in the gaming world courtesy of No Mans Sky. (If you find this stuff entertaining, you can play it on the Playstation on a planet of your choice!)

When our energy-ownership world happens, people will inevitably become much more switched on to the power they're using and how efficient their homes are. For now, we're all pretty much at the learning stage.
To be honest, it's only in the past few years that I've become interested enough in our Gas and Electric supply to get the calculator out. But in a nutshell, it's pretty simple maths.
Every device in your home draws power, measured (by in-home displays) in watts.
If you're using 200 watts, then every 5 hours, you'll draw 1000w or 1KWh (One Kilowatt-hour) which is how you're billed.
Depending on your agreement, this could be anything from 10p to 14p per kWh.

When everything was switched off in our home, (as it is for a large portion of the day), our IHD was showing us that we were using ~260-270w.
Forgetting about the big occasional appliances, dishwasher, washing machine, (which run up the bill the fastest and in the shortest time 85% of our bill in fact), I was still keen to get this number down. Using the logic that a 100w lightbulb is now grossly inefficient, 270w seemed like a lot.
So, I made a quick calculation to see how much the 'dormant' home was costing us.

270w x 18 (hours approximately) = 4.86KWh / day or ~ 53p a day.

53p x 365 days ~ £193 per year for ... essentially nothing.
This is around 15% of our annual household bill.

So I looked into the smart plug option. I also had a look into getting a more efficient fridge freezer, as our Zanussi (from the 80s) was getting hot. Great for drying clothes, not so good for keeping the costs down. We invested around £200 in a more efficient freezer and that brought the usage down by about 90w.
Of course, the Freezer isn't always running (although the old one might have been) so occasionally, we'd see a spike of around 100w when it was working. But dormant, the house was now around the 190w mark.

Then I installed some smart plugs, I paid £25 for a set of three (pictured). One went behind the TV, one went to the upstairs TV and Playstation, and the third I put where the printers are connected. We set them up using the Smartlife app (no hub necessary) and then integrated them into the Google Home app. I checked our Laptop chargers too, which are pretty much always on, but from what I can tell, they're smart switching, IE, they power down when not charging - as should all devices really.

The draw from the various devices around the house came as a surprise. The two TV's especially, although these have amplifiers, subwoofers, a games console, Blu ray players and Freesat boxes attached when off, each area was still drawing around 30w. Although it's clearly not as convenient as leaving them on all the time and scheduled TV recordings fail if the Freesat box isn't on and connected to the internet, the net result is that the usage when off has hit the satisfying low of 64w!

Using the same maths, 64w x 18 hours a day = 1.15KWh or around 12.6p a day, or a 41p saving! Multiply this 41p saving by 365 days and we're looking at a reduction of almost £150 per year. Admittedly, this first year has seen an investment of £200 in a new freezer, the savings from the plugs alone have paid for themselves.

There is also the added satisfaction of saying - "Ok Google - Turn off the TV" into your phone and watching the almost immediate effect of the IHD dropping by around 30w!