My electricity bill went up significantly last year. Not dramatically — not the kind of increase that makes you call the supplier to check for an error — but enough that I noticed it and started wondering which appliances were responsible. The problem with electricity costs is that they’re invisible. You know roughly what your bill is, but you don’t know which devices are contributing what, which means you can’t make targeted decisions about where to reduce consumption.
The Tapo P110MA smart plug with energy monitoring made the invisible visible. Within a week of using it I knew exactly which appliances in my home were using the most electricity, and within a month I’d made changes that reduced my bill by a meaningful amount. For a device that costs around fifteen pounds, the return on investment was immediate.
The Problem With Not Knowing
Before I started using energy monitoring plugs, my approach to electricity costs was essentially guesswork. I knew that tumble dryers and electric showers use a lot of electricity. I knew that LED bulbs use less than incandescent ones. Beyond those broad generalisations, I had no idea what was actually driving my bill.
The things I’d assumed were expensive turned out to be less significant than I’d thought. The things I hadn’t thought about — a games console left on standby, a dehumidifier running continuously in the spare room, a second fridge in the garage that was older and less efficient than I’d realised — turned out to be the real contributors. You can’t make good decisions about energy consumption without data, and the P110MA provides the data.
Why I Chose the Tapo P110MA
The Tapo P110MA Mini Wi-Fi Smart Plug had the specific combination of features I needed. The energy monitoring is the core function — it measures the real-time and cumulative power consumption of whatever is plugged into it and reports it through the Tapo app. The Matter certification means it works with a wide range of smart home platforms including Alexa, which I already use, without requiring a separate hub. And the mini form factor means it doesn’t block the adjacent socket, which is the practical problem with larger smart plugs.
Tapo is TP-Link’s smart home brand, and the P110MA is their current flagship energy monitoring plug. The Matter certification is the key differentiator from older models — Matter is the new smart home interoperability standard that ensures devices work across different ecosystems, which means the plug will continue to work regardless of which smart home platform I use in the future.
Setup and the First Week
Setup took about three minutes. Download the Tapo app, plug in the P110MA, follow the in-app instructions to connect it to the home Wi-Fi network. The app then shows real-time power consumption in watts and cumulative consumption in kWh, with the option to set your electricity tariff so the app can calculate costs in pounds rather than just units.
I started by plugging it into the socket that powers the games console. The standby consumption was 15 watts — not enormous, but running continuously for 24 hours that’s 0.36 kWh per day, or about 130 kWh per year. At current electricity rates that’s roughly £40 per year for a device that’s not being used. I moved the plug to the dehumidifier in the spare room. The consumption was higher than I’d expected — the dehumidifier was running at about 300 watts for eight hours a day, which added up to a significant monthly cost for a room that didn’t need continuous dehumidification.
The Changes I Made
Based on the data from the P110MA, I made three changes. I put the games console on a smart schedule so it powers off completely at midnight rather than sitting on standby. I set the dehumidifier to run for four hours in the morning rather than continuously. And I replaced the old garage fridge — which the P110MA revealed was consuming nearly twice what a modern equivalent would use — with a newer, more efficient model.
The games console change saves about £40 per year. The dehumidifier change saves more. The fridge replacement has a longer payback period but will save money over its lifetime. None of these changes would have been possible without the data to identify the problem in the first place.
The Smart Home Integration
The Matter certification means the P110MA works natively with Alexa without any additional setup beyond the initial pairing. I can turn devices on and off by voice, set schedules through the Alexa app, and include the plug in Alexa routines. The simulated presence feature — which turns the plugged-in device on and off at randomised times when you’re away — is a useful security feature that I hadn’t specifically been looking for but have used when travelling.
I now have four P110MA plugs in the house, each monitoring a different circuit. The cumulative data gives me a clear picture of my home’s energy consumption that I simply didn’t have before. My electricity bill has reduced and I understand why, which means I can continue to make informed decisions rather than guessing.
Where to Find It
The Tapo P110MA Mini Wi-Fi Smart Plug is available in the Power Outlets & Sockets collection, within the broader Power & Electrical Supplies and Hardware ranges.
If your electricity bill has increased and you don’t know why, an energy monitoring smart plug is the most direct way to find out. The data will almost certainly surprise you — the appliances you think are expensive often aren’t, and the ones you haven’t thought about often are. The Tapo P110MA is the plug I’d recommend: Matter certified for future compatibility, mini form factor so it doesn’t block adjacent sockets, and a clear app that makes the data genuinely useful rather than just technically present. Four plugs in, and I understand my home’s energy consumption better than I ever have.
— Owen Griffiths, homeowner, former electricity bill guesser, and now the person in his household who can tell you exactly how much the games console costs to leave on standby
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