The convenience of home technologies such as interior lighting control, motorized window shades, and other such innovations is obvious. What we’ve found over the years, however, is that many people aren’t aware of just how easy it is to save money by installing these products.
Intelligently designed home automation systems can help lower your home’s energy consumption, thus reducing your household expenses and your carbon footprint. There are several key ways in which lighting control, motorized shades, and other technologies can help you to save money.
Motorized Shades Help Reduce Heating and Cooling Costs
By automatically regulating the amount of heat which is able to enter and escape from your house, through the use of motorized shades, you can dramatically reduce your heating and air conditioning bills throughout the year.
Normally, changing shades on up to fifteen windows or more throughout the average two-story house, several times per day, would be a chore… and if you want it done while you’re not around, it would literally require someone coming to your house to do it for you.
Motorized shades remove the hassle, allowing you to program a series of actions in advance – or to remotely adjust your shades individually, from anywhere in the world if you like. Keeping your home cool has never been easier or more efficient. When properly integrated into a smart home system, motorized shades can help keep your house several degrees warmer or cooler than normal, towards your advantage, and all while saving money on heat and AC.
Automated Climate Control Monitors Your Activity
Climate control – the heating and cooling of your house – can be automated, even on a room-by-room basis. Heating and cooling can be turned on and off, or raised and lowered as needed, depending upon whether or not there is activity within a room. If there’s nobody around, why pay to heat or cool empty rooms?
This type automation is the hallmark of the equipment offered by Control4 and Savant. Over the course of months, the simple savings accumulated through the addition of automated climate control can add up to a significant amount of money. Combined with other aspects of an automated home, this functionality can have a significant impact on your overall energy usage.
Reduce Power Usage through Lighting Control
How many times have you climbed into bed only to realize you left a light on in another room? With lighting control you don’t have to get up to go turn it off. It’s as simple as pressing a single button to turn off all the lights in your house.
You can program settings in advance, or use a mobile device to change your house’s lighting mode from anywhere in the world. Lights can be automatically dimmed, or programmed to turn off at key times of the day – such as when you’re going to bed. The need to remember to turn off the lights after leaving a room – a particular concern in a house with children – is gone; now, you can do that from anywhere. All of this combines to significant savings on your electric bill.
Reduce Phantom Energy Use
The term “phantom energy” is an increasingly common one. It refers to the power drain through appliances which are left in “energy friendly” modes, idling or dormant. The term “energy friendly” is something of a misnomer, since it refers to a mode in which the appliance – such as a computer, or a television set – isn’t actually serving any purpose, but is still drawing power.
Many appliances draw a surprising amount of power, even while they’re turned off: on average, this represents up to ten percent of your monthly electric bill. Traditionally, the only solution to this is to unplug appliances while they’re not in use – right down to your microwave, and your washing machine. Now there are devices that can tie into your energy management system allowing you to negate these appliances’ “standby” modes in a much more convenient fashion.
Integrate Energy Management Systems for Personal Monitoring
Energy management systems, such as solar panels, can be integrated into your smart home system as well. This allows you to monitor electrical production, usage, and even chedule functions which draw the most power accordingly.
Much of this can even be handled automatically, allowing you to augment the savings provided by your solar panels – without having to worry about changing settings manually from one day to the next.
