Adding smart home devices can help you save energy and money at the same time. Like solar energy, energy-saving smart home products can help you reduce utility costs and reduce environmental impact. The sustainable living movement and the smart home have come of age in recent decades and have enjoyed a beneficial but sometimes uncomfortable partnership. Yes, smart home devices can save resources.
No, not everyone will. There are many new features in the smart home. Not long ago, casually telling a computer to adjust the lights or adjust the temperature was straight out of science fiction. However, it's not all about flash.
There are real efficiencies you can enjoy with an equipped home that translate into savings of dollars and cents. With sensors everywhere and the ability to run automations on your appliances, you can ensure that you'll never use more energy than you absolutely need. Smart bulbs can be activated in reaction to other smart devices, motion sensors, or your location (also known as geofencing), so they'll work efficiently without you having to turn them off. Another possible way to save more is to retroactively connect a home's systems to better control their use, and then use that knowledge to help your home operate more efficiently.
Putting a smart thermostat in a house with single-pane windows and no insulation to reduce energy consumption is a bit like putting a band-aid over a crack in the Hoover Dam and saying it's fixed. In addition to functioning as a smart thermostat, connected to room sensors that can monitor temperature, movement and humidity, the device can also interact with all the major systems in your home (provided they are manufactured by Honeywell or one of its partners) to provide information on how Uses water, energy and even monitors air quality. Other high-tech devices, such as smart plugs, light bulbs and power outlets connected to a smart home assistant, can also allow consumers to reduce unnecessary use of lights and cut off power to appliances that continue to consume energy even when not in use. If you want more complete control or if you have a second home, the Flo de Moen and Phyn Plus are intelligent water valves that are installed in the main water pipe and can detect and alert you to leaks as small as a leaking faucet.
You're not likely to get ahead if you just analyze the monetary cost of each of these smart home devices compared to the money saved thanks to their efficiency. Energy Star even created an entirely new certification process to apply to smart thermostats, avoiding traditional laboratory measurements and instead modeling energy savings using aggregated household data. If you don't have central air conditioning, a smart air conditioner or a standard window unit with a smart plug can give you additional control so you don't waste cold air when there's no one at home who appreciates it. Or, instead of opting for a smart fan, consider the Lutron Caséta Smart Fan Control, which works with most existing fans (requires the Caséta Smart Bridge) and can respond to an application's triggers or other smart devices, such as thermostats or temperature sensors.
If you need to power several things, you can try a smart power strip such as the TP-Link HS300 Kasa Smart Wi-Fi power strip, which can track up to six devices individually. .
