Summer is made of everything we love, from long sunny days to peaceful beach strolls or pool-side barbecues. The warm weather invites us to relax, enjoy and take things easy. But sometimes the heat may be too much, and while we all love the summer season, we also fear the higher energy bills that will inevitably come after our air conditioners start working to keep us cool and comfortable during the hottest months of the year.
The good news is a smart home can not only help you keep your home safe during your summer vacation and take care of your kids, but also reduce the energy waste and save money during the hot months. How? Here are five tips!
1. Remotely manage your home devices
Heating and cooling take one of the biggest chunks on the monthly energy bill. But don’t fret, according to the Consumer Technology Association a smart home can help cut energy consumption by 10%. Did you leave the AC working when you left the house? With a smart home, you’ll be able to remotely turn it off from your smartphone. You can also create different sets of rules and create scenarios such as automatically turn on the boiler before you wake up at the morning, so you’ll start your day with a warm shower. These rules will make your smart appliances work together for a more efficient energy management and help you save money on a monthly basis.
2. Keep your home cool… not the entire neighborhood
Your smart home will allow you to set your smart thermostat and door/window sensors to work together to achieve the most efficient cooling of your home. If the system detects that a door or window has been left open, the thermostat will automatically reduce the temperature setting, so you don’t have to pay the extra money of cooling the entire neighborhood, with the great waste of energy it entails. Once the door or window has been shut, the system will return to the original temperature setting.
3. No more standby appliances
Standby TVs, laptops, desktop computers and other electrical devices are silent energy thieves that usually go unnoticed. We know it is not always easy to remember to turn everything off, but fear not, smart plugs are here to help. They will disconnect all your electric devices when not in use, and you can even schedule them to do so at a certain time. For example at night. Never again worry about standby devices sucking your precious home energy.
4. Automated lighting
Unnecessarily turned on lights in the house are also a big energy sucker, especially during summer when daylight stretches well into the evening. It is very easy to forget to turn the porch lights off after enjoying a long and pleasant afternoon with friends. Smart bulbs can automatically regulate its brightness depending on the level of natural light and be scheduled to turn on and off at designated times, minimizing the energy wastage.
5. Smart decision-making
With smart home systems your home’s temperature can be controlled at all times, and the best part is you won’t even have to think about it, your smart home will take care of everything for you. Thanks to their innovative technology, smart home systems now incorporate automatic decision–making skills. In simple words, the system learns your needs and makes a decision based on them in conjunction with external data, without any action on your part. For example, a smart thermostat can recognize when the room is empty and “decide” to turn off the AC. Another example is when your smart home system uses external information, such as Google weather, so that when temperature is extremely high it will “decide” to lower the blinds to insulate the room from the outside heat. Also, thanks to geolocation technology, your smart home can detect when you are about to arrive home from work and turn on the lights for you. As you see, when it comes to reducing energy consumption, smart home is even smarter than you thought!
The ability of smart devices to communicate with each other, combined with the latest technological advancements, such as geolocation and automatic decision-making, have proved to work successfully together to create more energy-efficient homes. This is good news for the environment, as smart homes are helping reduce the carbon footprint in thousands of households around the world. And also for you as homeowner, since smart home tech provides a unique tool to make a more efficient use of your home energy, helping cut costs and save money at the end of the month. And the best part is that as technology improves, everything will work automatically, almost without intervention, so you don’t have to worry about anything else except enjoying the sunny days ahead.
