Devices which are always on and never truly turn off

Most of the homes in our town rely on well water which means we also have various things like water softeners and acid neutralizers in our basements like miniature water treatment plants. Our home has an additional preventative device, a UV disinfectant lamp. I have a TP-Link HS110 connected to this device.

https://viqua.com/product/d4-premium-with-lcd-screen/

The device is always on unless the bulb burns out or the power goes out. Sense shows it hovers in the 42-45w range and has settled in on 42w being its Always On value. I set the standby to on threshold to be 30w as in my mind this device is never actually in standby. I figured 30 was low enough to avoid its typically daily swings.

Does anyone have recommendations on if this is a good approach to use? I’d almost prefer to get rid of “Always On” for this device in the UI as it is sort of ineffective and relegate it to “average draw” or something like that. Thoughts?

What the standby is mostly meant for is things that fluctuate in power. For example, I have my computer plugged into a surge protector which is plugged into an HS110. When “off” it still consumes 6W of power. So I set the threshold to 8W. This means if I want to be notified when the computer is turned on, I will be notified after it crosses that threshold. I also won’t get a bubble in Now until the computer is on and not in standby.

So the question is… do you want this power to be counted under always on, or by itself? I think it’s a personal choice. Personally, I’d set the value to 45W with a minimum on/off duration of 10s. This is what I’ve done with my network rack that constantly draws just under 40W. To me, having it as it’s own bubble is misleading. I know some people like to get that always on bubble as small as possible though.

In any case, I don’t think you want the threshold set to 30W. I think this will attribute 30W to always on and 12W to the bulb being “on”. If the bulb is off, what wattage does the device draw? I’d guess maybe 1 or 2 watts. I’d either enter that or enter 45, but not something in between.

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It is never off unless it burns out. The bulb is inside a quartz sleeve inside the unit. Not a real good way to test that state.

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