Hi there, my brother has asked my to help me with reducing his power usage in his flat. He wants to be able to use a smart plug to turn off a once any phone plugged into it has charged to 100% instead of being left on all night. Not sure if this automation can be run on Alexa etc. and i believe it can be done in home assistant. As my brother is power saving mad and if i decide to use a raberry pi. what size ups or power bank can i use to power the pi for say 24 hours or longer. I will obviously have a plug conneted to said power bank to turn on to re-charge once power bank or ups reaches a certain charge %.
Or are they any smart plugs already on the market with a this feature built into there app.
The smart plug will most likely use more energy than the phone charger once the phone is fully charged.
If you did use a Raspberry Pi to run Home Assistant, that would also draw much more power than the phone charger.
So, if one’s goal is to save electricity, adding a computer and smart plugs is likely to increase power usage versus just letting the smart phone’s built in logic handle everything.
Not sure that this is viable. Most phone chargers will drop their consumption to well under 1 Watt once there is no current being drawn from them. Any smart plug will have a residual current consumption to keep its receiver active, etc. Before going too far down the rabbit hole, I’d suggest measuring the idle current drawn by the charger, and comparing it with the resting current drawn by the smart plug. You may find that the gain is negligible (or even negative, if that makes sense).