Zuli Power Management 

 

So what is Zule?  It is a KickStarter company, one that raised capital in a micro-financing environment.  I recently purchased 3 plugs, roughly the same price as WeMo, but the GUI is light speeds' faster and infinitely more comprehesible.  Below are pictures of the devices.  On the left, is the device itself.  On the right, is the GUI as seen on an iPhone 6.  The plug measures the energy flowing through the plug into the connected devices.  From the iPhone, the plug can be set to turn on or off everyday of the week and multple times during the day.  However, this plug is much smarter than the WeMo plug in that this plug is equiped with bluetooth technology.  That means that when the plug senses a smart phone with the app loaded, it will over-ride the daily settings and turn on when you enter the room and turn off when you leave the room.  If there are 4 members in a family and all have iPhones or Androids, if all are connected to the plugs, then the last person leaving the room, will turn off the plug automatically.  Zuli calls this Presence.  The GUI will show all of the power plugs and connects to Nest (see next section) also informing it, when Elvis has left the room.

 

I am looking forward to see if these plugs can reduce electrical consumption further.  As can be seen in the chart below, the impact of LED lighting and power plugs is sighificant.