Electricity is more expensive in the Philippines than in Japan. Here’s a way to lower those bills

How many times have you received your electricity bill and been shocked to see how high it was?

In the Philippines, this is a common concern. The country has the most expensive electricity rates in Asia, even higher than Japan’s. Such rates have not only hurt households, but also made doing business very costly. The problem is largely an issue of supply – there’s barely enough to meet the economy’s fast-growing demand.

With no immediate remedy for this – since it takes years to build power plants – it makes sense to focus on what you can control: your consumption. There are many ways to save on electricity, but it all comes down to the kind of appliances you use and how you use them.

This is where technologies like WattSmart come in. WattSmart, a Philippine startup, allows you to determine how much power is consumed by your appliances to help you budget your electricity costs.

When we say determine, it doesn’t just tell you the total volume of electricity you consume in a month’s time, but how much each of your appliances at home or the office is using at any given time.

It works this way: WattSmart sensors are attached to the wires connected to your circuit breaker. These sensors determine how much electricity each of your appliances uses, and this information is transmitted to WattSmart via wifi or SMS, whichever is available. You can access the information from WattSmart’s website through your account. A month’s subscription to an eight-sensor kit costs PHP500 (US$11), so it’s PHP6,000 (US$135) for a full year.

“Customers can see a historical analysis of their energy consumption, broken down to sensor level information, which could be specific big appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators, water heaters, or electrical lines. We’ve designed the interface so it’s easy for the user to define what is being measured and where it is located in their homes or businesses,” says Jan Aaron Augustus Garcia, CEO and one of WattSmart’s founders.

“What we’ve observed so far is that our partners like that they can assign costs to specific appliances. They now have the ability to account for their energy consumption in a more detailed manner, and can move forward with a management plan,” he adds.

Garcia, an electrical engineer, says the WattSmart team will give you recommendations on how to reduce your electricity bill. The recommendations range from technical to practical ones – like what type of appliances you should use, which of your appliances should be replaced or controlled to generate savings, should you heat your food using a microwave or stove, or when’s the best time to wash your clothes during the day.

For their current subscription price, he notes they’re mainly targeting the A and B residential markets, which are spending an average of PHP15,000 (US$337) on electricity per month, as well as small and medium enterprises. “We can bring down their electricity costs by 10 to 20 percent.”

He says they’re aiming to bring down their subscription price to cater to the lower income markets.