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Notwithstanding environmental concerns about your CO2 footprint, rising energy prices in the UK mean that consumers feeling the squeeze more than ever. Energy bills are the area of household expense which have seen the largest rise over the last ten years. In this climate, it’s becoming even more essential to find ways to make your home more energy efficient. Luckily there are several options available for you to try. It might seem a little contradictory to add more electronic devices to your home in order to reduce your energy consumption, but connected smart systems are designed to do just that. They have several features which help them achieve this, but will they actually save you money? Remote power management This is one of the biggest draws of connected smart home systems. Being able to control your central heating or your indoor lighting from outside the house holds several benefits. Say you’re getting out of work early; you hop onto the smart home system app on your phone and adjust your central heating to switch on an hour early. By the time you get back, the heating is on and your home is toasty. Beyond the extra convenience, remote power management is an excellent way to save energy. For example, it allows you to turn the heating off if you forgot to when you left the house, ensuring that you aren’t wasting any energy. The same thing can be done for your lighting. Dimming tech allows you to control the light level in the room you’re in, giving you the power to adjust the ambient light level to your needs, giving you the power to conserve your energy. Smart reactivity What makes these systems truly smart is how they react to conditions. For heating, even if you created a schedule for your system to abide by, a smart thermostat will react to changes in the weather. If it becomes unusually warm, your heating won’t just continue blasting out heat and wasting energy as scheduled. On top of that, open window tech means that your heating will detect if there is an open window in the room, so will switch off, preventing wasted energy. You’ll see similar things with smart lighting – your lights can turn off if the room is already bright. Impressive personalisation Your home is your castle, so you should be able to have maximum control over your various devices and appliances. Connected smart systems allow you to personalise how your home works. A smart thermostat, connected to every radiator in the house, lets you choose the temperature of each room with unbelievable precision. This encourages greater energy saving because it makes it much easier to change the temperature in every room. The introduction of smart personal assistants like Amazon Echo have made connected smart systems even more viable and effective, while also enhancing personalisation possibilities. Wake up in the morning and it’s a bit chilly? Simply ask Alexa to turn the heating on. Careful monitoring As part of your connected smart system you can install a home energy monitor. These wireless devices will monitor your electricity usage in real time, from your various appliances. Integrated apps for these devices mean that you will always be able to keep track of the energy usage in your home. Fully integrated into your home, you can use these to make sure that nothing is wasting your energy unnecessarily. Money saving in the long term All of these excellent features are going to help you save money, but you will only see the benefits if you are planning on staying in the property for at least a couple of years. Smart home systems are going to set you back a few hundred pounds, so it will take a couple of years for you to recoup the costs. This means that, for the moment, connected smart systems will only save you money if you are staying at the property in the long term. Keep this in mind when you make this decision.
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