Every watt you use on most smart energy platforms gets logged, profiled, and potentially sold—but it doesn't have to be that way. In this episode, Chelsea Miller walks you through building energy-saving automations that run entirely offline using Home Assistant and Matter 1.4 devices. You'll learn how to cut standby power, shift loads to off-peak hours, and respond to real-time consumption without sending a single packet to external servers. This guide is for anyone who already has Home Assistant running locally and wants to slash their energy bill while keeping their usage data completely private.

• Commission Matter devices directly through Home Assistant's interface rather than manufacturer apps to avoid creating cloud accounts that track your consumption patterns.

• Use a network packet sniffer like Wireshark to  ...