How Amazon Alexa Will Help You Lower Your Electricity Bill


Hello Watt and Alexa introduce Skill, a brand new feature available on Echo devices. Its purpose is to provide daily monitoring of your electricity consumption, all with a simple voice command.

Source: Amazon and Hello Watt

If you pay particular attention to your electricity consumption – in a tense context where the network could experience saturation phases – then the new feature developed by Hello Watt and the Alexa teams could be of interest to you. Its nickname: “Skill Hello Watt”.

This skill, as the two brands like to call it, is directly integrated into Echo devices (speaker and connected screen). Above all, it allows you to monitor your daily electricity consumption using a simple voice command. But before getting there, a little configuration is in order.

Breakdown of your consumption by use

You must indeed ask your Echo device to launch this feature as follows: “Alexa, open the Hello Watt Skill“. Instructions will be provided to you for creating an account. Obviously, it is necessary to enter your Linky or Gazpar number (the equivalent of Linky, but for gas) to take advantage of it.

Once this maneuver is complete, several requests can be submitted to Alexa: ask your monthly consumption or even know your energy consumption distribution. A compatible Echo Show connected screen allows you to consult all the information via a widget integrated into the home screen, in order to view it at a glance.

Alexa x Hello Watt
Source: Amazon and Hello Watt

What is especially important to understand here is that Amazon extends and extends the functions of Hello Watt in two ways: both via voice responses from Alexa, but also through visual content displayed on connected devices. . In short, the advantages and limitations of the Hello Watt application remain valid.

As a reminder, this free service allows you to monitor your daily energy consumption (in kWh, in euros and in CO2 emissions) in a simple and intuitive way, via annual, monthly and daily results. Hour-by-hour monitoring is even possible if you activate a specific option – hour-by-hour data collection – on Enedis.

Hello Watt, advantages and limits

The site or application is able to analyze your consumption in order to tell you if your peak hour/off-peak hour contract is profitable, and the annual gain in euros. Hello Watt even estimates your percentage of electricity that must be consumed during off-peak hours for your said contract to be financially profitable.

Even better, a graph shows you the distribution of your consumption by use (hot water, heating, household appliances, cooking, audiovisual, lighting): the amount spent in euros for each use is even specified.

Alexa x Hello Watt
Source: Amazon and Hello Watt

All of these elements are thus available from Alexa or an Echo Show. The pair specifies that the voice assistant relays a level of information as precise as that of the application. For you, it’s a way to better understand your electricity consumption, and potentially better control it.

Hello Watt still has some limitations, which can be found by extension on the “Skill” function: you do not have access to real-time consumption, nor to current day’s consumption (the data is available from of D-1).

Also, the way Hello Watt collects data may be less accurate than other solutions. The company indeed recovers the data via Enedis, itself linked to your Linky account. For its part, nrLINK is even more precise: a sensor to be plugged into your Linky allows you to monitor your consumption in real time.

An interesting first solution

Thanks to this sensor, the data is transmitted directly from the meter, and not via an intermediary. In addition to that, a small screen connected to your Wi-Fi displays all the consumption information live. This kind of solution nevertheless has a cost: around 140 euros. On the Ecojoko side, the data is taken directly from the general circuit breaker.

Anyway, Alexa and Hello Watt have the merit of providing a turnkey solution for monitoring daily electricity consumption. If you are equipped with an Echo device and want to get your first foot in the energy universe, this alternative seems relevant on paper.

To take you further and make you want to take the plunge, Amazon has even put together a specific package called “The Connected Home Kit – Control your energy consumption”. It includes a Netatmo smart thermostat, an Echo Show 5 screen and two Meross connected sockets, for a total price of 165.99 euros.

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