A Super Simple Way to Make Your Home Energy Smart

Lisa Raphael

In her past professional lives, Lisa has served the masses as the Editorial Director at Brit + Co, Bieber Whisperer at J-14, Golden Girls Fan Club Prez at Lifetime and Talk Show Host Understudy to Katie Couric. Now, she's taking on the sports world at The Relish , teaching Hairography 101 in her spare time and will forever be trying to fill the hole Zayn Malik left in her heart.

Full Bio

Mar 10, 2014

A Super Simple Way to Make Your Home Energy Smart

We love us some Quirky and the latest great idea to move a step closer to reality in their lab is an unassuming gadget that says it can help turn your home into a lean, green, energy-conscious machine. You stay sippin’ on yo’ kale juice and put Reter to work at detecting and helping detox your home’s energy issues.

Reter is a small, round energy meter that clamps onto the cords of your appliances and gadgets. Let it track how much juice you’re zapping running your AC, how much wattage your microwave or TV takes to “feed” you the essentials (heated up leftovers and DVR essentials, natch) and calculate just how much energy you actually drain by leaving the refrigerator door open.

Each device has a WiFi chip built inside that shares the stats on the Wink app , Quirky’s smartphone hub where you can track all of their smart creations once they’re in your home. You’ll be able to strap the device to any of the appliances in your home and get extra info for Quirky gadgets like Pivot Power Genius, the Egg Minder, Nimbus and Spotter.

There are a Sears showroom full of apps and gadgets that promise to illuminate your home’s energy usage and help you control it, but this is an easy buy for anyone looking to take a baby step into smart home-ing. It’s two simple steps: click this gadget onto the appliances you want to track and open up your smartphone. Voila! You probably feel smarter already.

Reter is still in the development phase right now so you can head over to Quirky to weigh in on how much you think it should eventually sell for.

What do you do to track your home’s energy consumption? Would you use Reter? How much would you spring for it?