@tweedge I had a similar experience a couple months ago looking for a new laundry washer & dryer - all the latest models had wifi. Why the hell would my washing machine need wifi? I bought the model from a couple years previous, with no smart features.
@hyc @tweedge A wifi washing machine can be turned on automatically when your home automation system spots a period of cheap electricity.
I use free electricity for doing the laundry when available, as that's always (so far) been during the daytime, but on non-free days I don't stay up to put the machine on at 2am when the price drops.
@TimWardCam @hyc @tweedge do you just schedule it for 2am then, og does your laundry machine have an integration for electricity prices?
@mrFred489 @hyc @tweedge If I had a washing machine that could be told to start a cycle unattended I'd get it to start at 2am - we're on the Flux tariff so fixed prices at fixed times of day.
Today the weather forecast was crap - it was supposed to be cloud and rain, so I charged the battery up quite a lot last night. And then the sun came out and completely filled up the battery ... so I put the washing machine on to use the generated power rather than export it.
@TimWardCam @mrFred489 @tweedge I'm usually awake at 2am anyway, so this bit of automation wouldn't mean much to me. Right now I'm on a flat rate tariff, haven't looked into whether a time-of-day tariff would make much difference yet.
@hyc @mrFred489 @tweedge Ah. I'm still working four days a week and I find it easiest to keep to a standard 9-5 working day, so being awake at 2am wouldn't really suit.