Review: Plentify HotBot

I’ve been testing the Plentify HotBot gadget for my geyser for the last seven weeks now. It promises to reduce your electricity bill because it turns your geyser into a smart one that you can control.

I also waited for a full calendar month to see what my report would look like and to have a better idea how it works, which is why I’m sharing about it now.

Who is Plentify

Plentify is a company based in Cape Town who wants to ‘enable clean, reliable, and affordable electricity’. It is targeting homeowners aiming to cut down on electricity costs or a property developers looking for sustainable innovations.

It describes itself as leveraging “advanced hardware, artificial intelligence and a user-centric design” to create smart home products to strengthen electricity systems for everyone.

Plentify sells both business and consumer solutions to those based in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria only, for now. They are based in South Africa and the United States.

Introducing the HotBot

I’ve been testing a consumer product, the HotBot, for household geysers. It is a gadget that can be installed on your solar or electric geyser to turn it into smart one, so you can control operating times from the dashboard.

The aim of the HotBot is to reduce your electricity bill, control it from anywhere, take out the geyser guesswork, and make the most of your solar if you have it installed.

To see if you are a suitable candidate for the HotBot, you need to have these checks in place: have an electric or solar geyser; spend on average R1000 per month on electricity; and be based in an area they operate in, mentioned above. If you have more than one geyser, you will need a HotBot for each one.

HotBot pricing structure

You can choose to get the HotBot through a monthly subscription over 24 months or purchase it once-off. This is what the pricing structure looks like for subscribing or buying it outright:

The subscription makes sense if you don’t have the money for an upfront purchase.

This is what you get for all of that:

• Installation by an accredited technician
• Electricity savings
• Monthly reports to help you save
• Web app access
• Updates and feature releases
• 5-year warranty, maintenance and service

HotBot sign-up and installation

I signed up as normal on the website, even with access to test the product. The process is just like how a customer purchasing it would experience it. And after the basics were provided, I got to choose a date and time of my choice for the installation.

An accredited installer will do the setup, and they estimate it to take around an hour but mine took a bit longer, roughly around two hours. The images above is what the product looks like installed.

HotBot usage

You will be shown how to access your account, which is on the my.plentify.io web interface. There is no app version, it is a URL that you need to visit to access your account and start using it. You will be provided with a leaflet on how to get going.

The web interface is minimal, and does what it needs to do without complications. You start by creating your routines. I installed this product on my second geyser, as my primary geyser is the IHP Geyser.

This geyser is used by my domestic worker in her room, and in our kitchen, so not very demanding. We set our timers in the beginning by estimating for the morning and evening to get going, before fully understanding how it works. But HotBot makes that easy by asking you what time you want hot water, and it will do the rest.

This is what the interface looks like:

It just shows Savings, Routines, Status and Settings. Under Savings you can track your savings by yesterday, this week and this month. The landing page will show you total savings since you installed the product.

Under Routine, I had it for longer than what is currently shown on the screenshot. In fact, it was running for twice that amount of time but more on that later. And then Status will tell you your current water temperature, and give you the option to “turn on now” or “delay” or turn on “vacation mode”. Settings is the screenshot at the end.

Using it is not complicated. You can test through trial and error based on your household’s needs. I found it to be a fuss-free product that does what it says. Once you have it setup, it does its job in the background. If you feel the water is not hot enough, you can adjust, but I’ve not had that issue. In fact, the opposite, more below.

HotBot Reports

The HotBot report is extremely insightful. My installation was done on 17 May, so my first 3-page monthly report with infographics was from 17-30 May, not exactly a full month. But now that I have waited for June to pass before sharing info, I am already finding it useful.

The report covers things like your savings; a comparison with the previous month; a graph of usage; if you are above or below average compared to household size (and others on the network); and some geyser health stats (leaks, heating).

It also summarises your schedule. Now here is where it gets interesting. Like I said from the onset, we just created a schedule before fully understanding how it works. The report tells me I am scheduling (not even using) more hot water than average household, and that I should remove slots I have it on for which I don’t use, listing what they are. How nifty?

I chatted to my domestic worker about when she showers and adjusted the schedule accordingly. So it is now running for half the original time I had it running for. I would not have been able to do that without the report. Your data will definitely help shape how you use the product.

Another thing it does is reminds you of vacation mode. So if you’re away, you can turn it off and because it’s available to access from anywhere, you can schedule it for hot water when you return.

The report further provides performance updates (size for household and usage levels; efficiency; max temp; interruptions if any). It also let me know there is a 96% reduction in my energy use during peak times.

Final thoughts

Before I had the HotBot installed, I didn’t know what value it would bring and didn’t fully understand how it works. Now that I have experienced it, I think it’s a genius product for South African households. We may be on a 100+ day load shedding streak, but that does not mean electricity cost isn’t going up every year.

The Plentify HotBot runs in the background without interruption, is easy to use, offers insightful reports to be efficient, which is key here; changing habits for the better. Now that I have it running, I am obssessed with saving power and saving it from heating when we are not using it.

We know a geyser likely contributes the most to your electricity bill, so why should you pay for when you are not using it? And for me, this is the bottom line: I don’t want to pay for it if I don’t need to. I also turn it off on the days my domestic worker is not here because then we run the dishwasher, which is another efficient appliance.

I cannot think of any downsides to this product, and if I have to really point something out – there is no smartphone app. It would be nice to have but in the bigger picture, not actually necessary.

If you are serious about cutting your electricity bill, you should get a Plentify HotBot. Even if you are skeptical, just go with the R99 a month subscription to begin with to test it out, which is accessible to most.