AlertMe SmartEnergy review

With rising utility costs, getting a handle on what’s using power in your home and reducing consumption is a great way to save money, let alone the planet. With its SmartEnergy kit, AlertMe is hoping to provide that visibility.

AlertMe has had an energy monitoring kit for a while, but SmartEnergy is a revamp of the service and now has no monthly subscription costs. The cost of the required hardware has also been reduced to just £50, including a colour screen that lets you see at a glance how much power your home is using.

This already makes it considerably cheaper than the popular Watson Home Energy Monitor (around £90), which only gives you a screen to view power consumption. With AlertMe you get something a lot smarter.

The SmartHub sends your electricity usage figures to the online portal.

The reason for this is down to the SmartHub, which plugs into your broadband connection to upload your data to the AlertMe website. It’s into this that you plug the SmartMeter Reader, which clamps round any of the power cables connected to your electricity meter.

The meter clamp connects to any of the cables coming from your electricity meter.

From the AlertMe web portal you get the real intelligence of the system. By collecting data from your home, AlertMe is able to calculate the base “Always On” level of your home; in other words, the amount of power that your home constantly uses when you’ve turned off everything you normal turn off.