Smart home devices are bought on capability and judged on convenience. Their running cost rarely enters the decision, and this winter is a reasonable time to check it.
The energy context
Dutch TTF futures, Europe’s main gas benchmark, have climbed roughly 120% since the start of 2026, reaching about €63.7/MWh in mid-August. Winter forecasts are moving toward an average near €60/MWh from €45/MWh, and gas and electricity bills could rise if wholesale prices stay elevated long enough to feed through.
Where the consumption is
Individually, most smart devices draw very little. The relevant fact is that they draw it continuously — a device that is never off consumes 8,760 hours a year.
The categories that matter in a large installation:
Hubs and bridges. Always on by design. A household running three ecosystems may have three bridges doing overlapping work.
Cameras. The highest continuous draw in most smart homes, particularly with continuous recording and night illumination.
Devices with poor standby behaviour. Some smart plugs and switches draw meaningfully more idle than others, and this is rarely on the box.
Where the standard helps
Matter 1.3, finalised in 2024 and reaching shipping hardware through the 2025 and 2026 cycles, extended device types for energy management.
A standardised energy device type means consumption can be read in a common format by any compliant hub, rather than living in separate vendor apps. That makes measuring your own installation practical rather than theoretical.
Note the version distinction: a plug certified as a basic on/off device does not report energy the way one certified against the energy management device type does. Both say Matter.
Consolidation is the real saving
Joint Fabric enables cross-ecosystem sharing, allowing a device to be shared across ecosystems without full re-commissioning.
The practical consequence is that households running parallel ecosystems to accommodate incompatible devices may be able to retire duplicated infrastructure. Removing a redundant bridge saves more than optimising a light bulb.
Reasonable expectations
A typical smart home is not a large share of a household energy bill. Heating, hot water and major appliances dominate, and they will dominate this winter too.
The honest case is narrower: measure before adding more, retire what duplicates something else, and treat cameras as the one category worth checking properly. Everything else is rounding.
