Track down the energy hogs in your home

>> Sumi Das: Hello, and welcome to Sumi's Smart Picks. I'm Sumi Das, and each week I'll tell you about a clever product that in one way or another helps us live cleaner, greener lives. My pick this week, Visible Energy's UFO Power Center. If you want to be more energy efficient and if you want to find out which appliances in your home are the energy hogs, this is the device for you. You will need either an iPad or an iPhone to use it. Setup is pretty simple. Download the app and then you'll have to establish a connection between the UFO and your home network, just takes a couple of minutes, and then you can start plugging in your devices. We have a desk lamp plugged into the yellow socket over here, and then we have a TV plugged into the blue socket. Then go to your app and you can see exactly how much energy these devices are consuming over the course of a month, over the course of a week, even over the course of a day. Under the Power tab, you can see the Meter view. You can find out exactly how much the energy is costing you. You can set up a schedule. So say for example you don't watch TV during the day. You can turn off the TV completely so that you're saving money and then you can have it turned back on in the evening. Under the Sockets tab, this is where you can control the devices. So for example, I can turn off the monitor, I can turn off the desk lamp. There are a couple of minor complaints that I have about this product. Well, the design is cool and true to its name, it does evoke a UFO. I wish it wasn't quite so bulky. Also, at this point in time, you can't control your appliance remotely. You have to use this app from your home network and be connected to that network, at least for now. In the future, the makers of the product hope to add that feature. But if you want to conserve energy, this is a smart way to do it. That's my pick for this week, the UFO Power Center from Visible Energy. Check back next week for more.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====