Tim, we’re maybe talking only about 15$-20$. Using my newly created safety blueprint it took me ~5 minutes to approve two good looking plugs. The 1st is from ledvance and the 2nd is from innr out of 5 plugs plus 4 kinds of simple wall switches that I tested.
With these two plugs of different manufacturers I was not only able to 1st safely replace the normal on with the on_with_timed_off function. I also was 2nd able to approve the running countdown by reading back the on_time attribute. 3rd prove the countdown timer is running. 4th programmed the start_up_on_off attribute, that after a power outage the plug will find itself always in a safe “Off” state and read back this value to ensure it arrived. This prevents, respectively supports the electric power plants from failing to recover and closes the ring and repeat the picture of try to control at least a part of the herd of cats.
In my understanding this is highly important to be mentioned for the energy suppliers, because this I estimate these high power plugs to control the biggest crowd power consumers in private households. This makes the above mentioned examples and efforts mentioned above so important for a future where lots of households will use HA at home.
On the other side this means safety concept wise, that the non functioning devices do not satisfy the zigbee spec but should from safety perspective. Thus if you find any first person which burned his house using a power plug and HA could maybe have best arguments to fight against manufacturers or resellers that are ignoring the IEC62368 by supporting switch functionality for power consumers above 15W respectively above 100W.
Below 15W we have no safety issue at all according to IEC62368 because the energy is not sufficient to start a fire but we could have a power outage recovery issue that is required to clarify e.g. maybe on side of Dr. He?
Please no discussions about the following blueprint here. Its just a prove of concept and by far not to see from the flight level which this discussion is for! Its only a small safety puzzle part and invitation to add more safety to other HA members for controlling high power consumers and as partly prove of concept. You can find my first blueprint here: Safety Plug On_With_Timed_Off and Safe Off State fall back at start up.
This could be maybe also a weak starting point for testing more suitable high power plugs, find out manufacturer that do not respect Zigbee specs and may exceed any critical safety limits. Normally in an ideal world I would highly expected all plugs to include this functionality internally and guarantee to protect against any exceeding the IEC62368-1 safety limits by default - But sadly they don’t.