Smart homes are meant to make a house run better, not quietly add a layer of 24/7 electrical load.
In plenty of Australian homes, the waste is not dramatic on its own. It is the accumulation that hurts: NBN modem, mesh nodes, cameras, smart speakers, streaming boxes, chargers, hubs, powered blinds, standby TVs, and a few “temporary” smart plugs that became permanent.
The good news is you usually do not need to replace everything. A quick audit, a few setting changes, and better automation logic can turn a power-hungry setup into a more sensible smart home automation system.
Why smart homes can use more power than expected
Most connected devices use a small amount of electricity all the time. That is normal. The issue is how many of them stay on, waiting, listening, syncing, recording, or updating even when nobody is using them.
A typical living room can have a smart TV in standby, a soundbar, Apple TV or Foxtel box, game console, Wi-Fi speaker, charger bricks, and a mesh node in a cabinet. None of them is a major load alone. Together, they can run day and night.
The usual culprits are:
- network gear such as NBN modem, router, switch, and mesh access points
- security cameras and NVRs recording around the clock
- smart displays and voice assistants with bright screens left on
- older AV equipment that never fully sleeps
- smart plugs and USB adapters with poor idle efficiency
- battery chargers left connected in garages, studies, and utility rooms
We see this often in larger homes where the owner has done the right thing with LED lighting, then unknowingly adds 15 to 30 always-on devices across the house. The LEDs save plenty, but the background load starts eating into those gains.
Start with the devices that never really turn off
If you want a quick sense of where the power is going, look for devices with power bricks that feel warm, gear with status lights on overnight, and anything in a media unit or home office that stays connected for convenience rather than necessity.
Cameras are worth a closer look. A proper PoE camera and recorder setup is often more reliable than a collection of Wi-Fi cameras, but recording settings matter. High bitrate 24/7 recording, extra infrared lighting, and unnecessary cloud features all add overhead. If you are planning or refining surveillance, local-first options such as Frigate can help reduce dependence on cloud processing while giving you more control over what is actually running.
Quick wins: settings and habits that cut standby waste
This is the easiest place to start because it costs little or nothing.
Spend half an hour in each app and look for sleep, brightness, recording, timeout, and power-saving settings. Factory defaults are often set for engagement or convenience, not low running cost.
- Dim or blank smart displays overnight.
- Shorten screen timeouts on wall panels and kitchen displays.
- Turn off microphones on unused voice assistants in guest rooms or studies.
- Reduce camera sensitivity so trees, headlights, and possums are not triggering constant recordings.
- Disable “quick start” on TVs and consoles if fast wake is not worth the extra standby use.
- Switch off old streaming boxes and spare chargers at the power point if they are rarely used.
Home offices are a common problem area. A monitor, dock, printer, laptop charger, speakers, desk lamp and smart speaker can all stay half-awake after work. If the room is unused from 6 pm to 7 am, there is no reason most of that gear needs power all night.
Smart lighting deserves attention too. If you have decorative scenes running at full brightness, or exterior lights staying on longer than needed, tidy that up first. Good smart lighting should improve comfort and visibility while keeping control over runtime, dimming levels, and schedules.
A useful rule is this: if a device is always on, it should either be performing an important job or waiting in the most efficient state it can manage.
Use smart plugs, monitoring and lighting control properly
Smart plugs are often sold as convenience devices, but their best use is diagnosis. You cannot improve what you have not measured.
Put power-monitoring plugs on the devices you suspect first: the second fridge in the garage, gaming setup, bar fridge, AV cabinet, electric blanket, heated towel rail, or coffee station. Leave them for a week and compare the results.
Some of the most useful findings are not the obvious ones. We have seen older amplifiers drawing more in idle than expected, and heated bathroom gear left on by habit rather than need. We have also seen homes where the “smart” part was fine, but the old dumb appliance attached to it was the real energy problem.
Good uses for smart plugs
- turn off a media stack after midnight if nobody is in the room
- cut power to desk accessories outside work hours
- switch off bench appliances that do not need to stay live
- alert you when a washing machine cycle drops below a low wattage threshold
- track the actual running cost of portable heaters and dehumidifiers
There is a trade-off though. A cheap Wi-Fi plug with poor firmware can create more annoyance than benefit. If a plug controls something important, such as a freezer or networking gear, reliability matters more than novelty. For better long-term results, build around a stable platform such as Home Assistant, where monitoring and automation can stay local and remain flexible as the house changes.
Lighting is still one of the biggest efficiency wins. If you have not already moved fully to LED, do that before chasing tiny standby loads. Then layer sensible dimming and scheduling on top. A well-planned Hue or wired lighting system can reduce both runtime and brightness without making the house feel underlit.
Smarter automations: run loads when power is cheaper or solar is strong
This is where a smart home starts doing real work. Instead of just reacting to taps and voice commands, it can shift consumption to better times.
For solar homes, the sweet spot is usually late morning to mid-afternoon. That is the window for dishwashers, washing machines, pool pumps, hot water boosting, EV charging, and sometimes pre-conditioning the house before the evening peak.
For homes on time-of-use tariffs, the logic might be different. You may want hot water recovery or towel rail heating to avoid expensive evening periods. The point is not to automate everything. It is to automate the loads that make a measurable difference.
Examples that work well in Australian homes
- Run the dishwasher only when solar export exceeds a set threshold for 20 minutes.
- Turn on a home office heater 30 minutes before occupancy on winter mornings, but only if indoor temperature is below target.
- Pre-cool living areas before a summer peak period, then ease back once tariffs rise.
- Shut off forgotten lights, AV zones and exhaust fans when the house enters away mode.
- Delay EV charging until after peak tariffs, unless there is strong solar surplus.
The best results come from tying together presence, tariff timing, and generation data. If you have rooftop solar or a battery, this is where a proper smart energy management setup earns its keep. The automations need to know when the home is occupied, what the weather is doing, what the inverter is producing, and which loads can wait.
That also means the underlying network and controls need to be dependable. If Wi-Fi is patchy at the far end of the house, or half the key devices depend on third-party clouds, the logic tends to break at the worst possible moment. Good energy automation starts with solid home networking and infrastructure.
For renovations and new builds, it is worth deciding early which loads should be measured, which circuits may need relay control, and where wired sensors make more sense than battery devices. That planning step is usually far cheaper than trying to retrofit it later.
If you suspect your smart home is using more power than it should, start with the always-on devices, measure a few real loads, and tighten the automations that actually affect your bill. If you want help designing a cleaner, more efficient setup, Highlands Smart Homes can review the system, the wiring, and the daily routines that drive the biggest gains.