A method for monitoring a primary variable is carried out in a device having access to a set of sensors. The method includes the steps of receiving, from a network service, a series of forecasted values for the primary variable, each forecasted value being associated with one of a series of future time points; for at least one of the future time points, predicting a value for the primary variable using data of at least one secondary variable captured by a subset of the set of sensors, comparing the predicted value to the forecasted value associated with the future time point, and switching to a different subset of the set of sensors, if the predicted value deviates from the forecasted value with more than a specified threshold value.