Rising costs are all around us. This includes the cost of powering homes. When looking for ways to reduce our environmental impact, we must not forget electricity generation. Smart home devices are a great way to reduce energy costs and lower your home’s electricity needs.
Lighting is an example. Incandescent bulbs were used traditionally in lighting fixtures. These bulbs are made up of a filament that has an electrical current passing through it. This causes the material to glow. This is a more inefficient method than modern lighting options. It generates more heat and creates more waste. These bulbs are more likely to need to be replaced because they have a life expectancy of approximately 750 hours.
Smart lights are perhaps the best way to reduce energy consumption in your home.
An alternative is to use a newer LED lightbulb. This option requires less electricity to operate, doesn’t generate nearly the same amount of heat, and lasts far longer — 10,000+ hours. An LED bulb can be made smarter to make it more efficient. Smart lighting can make your home more efficient and reduce your impact on the environment.
Many people believe that adding smart lighting to their home is expensive. In the last few years, however, the cost of building a smart house has fallen significantly. There are many great options for smart lights that are affordable, and you can also choose from other types of light than the regular bulb type. Not all brands offer a wide range of fixture types, so you may be mixing and matching lights from different companies — but that’s okay.
While it can be frustrating to deal with multiple apps on the phone for each brand, the good news is there are options to manage them all through a single service. Amazon Alexa Google Assistant and Google Home both integrate with many smart devices. A dedicated smart home platform such as Samsung SmartThings is another option. This allows you to control all your devices from one place.
Smart lights save energy by scheduling on/off times and dimming.
You don’t have to use more than one brand of smart home device to build your smart home. Matter, a new communication standard that allows IoT devices to communicate with each other, will soon be available. This will increase smart home device use and make it easier to integrate these products for both users and companies.
GE, one the largest lighting companies in the world, produces some of the most advanced smart lights under its Cync brand. I was excited when I had the chance to speak with Patrick Miltner from GE Lighting, a Savant Company about Matter and GE Lighting products.
Miltner answered my question about the benefits GE’s Cync sees from adopting the new Matter standards. He said that Cync was the first smart-home partner to integrate directly and seamlessly with Google as part the original Made for Google program (now Google Seamless Setup). Although the Cync app is the best-featured and most user-friendly, there are still some users who prefer to use their smart assistant as their hub for their smart homes. This was true at the time we launched our Google integration and it is still true today.
“Matter now makes it simpler for the user and manufacturer, and we intend on continuing these direct integrations in future.” This is because users can choose to use the Cync app, or the Matter platform in one product. Just like they do with our other assistant integrations.
It is possible to create a common language that all smart devices can use to reduce friction in using these products.
Smart lighting uses LEDs to create illumination, which helps to reduce energy costs. But these lights help even more thanks to the smart features like being able to schedule your lights — from when they turn on or off to when they are dim or bright. Check your app to find out if you forgot turn off the lights while you were away on vacation or at work. These are just some of the many ways smart lights can benefit your budget and the environment.
There are many smart home products that go beyond lights. LG has a number of smart home devices that can be used to increase energy efficiency. LG has a wide range of appliances available on its ThinQ platform. These appliances can change how you think about things such as laundry and keeping food cold.
In Earth Day blog postLG gives an example of how smart appliances can help reduce energy costs. “Remote control, monitoring and monitoring features also help cut unnecessary electricity consumption.” Let’s say that after everyone has left for a much needed vacation, the front door has been locked. But one of the appliances has been accidentally left on. This is no problem with the LG ThinQ App. You can simply pull out your phone from any location to check the status and then turn off any appliance that is still in use. Once that’s done, you can get to the serious business of R & R.
The Matter standard development brings opportunities to brands to expand into areas that they may not have considered before due to the additional work required to get each device to properly work with others — GE Cync is one of those brands. Miltner responded that Cync would consider other smart home devices. We will continue that expansion, and while Matter compatibility may be an added benefit to these expansions, however, it is not the driving force. We have been deliberate in our expansion plans. That will continue into the future of Cync as Savant leverages their experience in the professional home automation industry and brings that to the DIY smart home arena.
Installing smart thermostats, which are great for reducing the energy use of your home, is another great option. available. One of the most popular on the market is the one that really kicked off the segment — the Nest Smart Thermostat.
The HVAC, heating and cooling systems are some of the most energy-hungry components in a house. It is possible to replace your entire system, but this can be very expensive. A smarter control will make it easier. Smart thermostats allow you to control the temperature, fan speed, mode, and fan from anywhere with an internet connection. Going even further, many of the thermostats will learn your preferences and whether you are home or not to determine if they can reduce the runtime for your HVAC — saving both money and energy.
Nest Smart Thermostats help to reduce energy use in the home and worldwide.
Nest Smart Thermostats use many of the same methods that I mentioned to reduce energy consumption in your home and to make global changes. Nest Renew programs use all of the information that each thermostat collects and global energy metrics in order to adjust HVAC runtime in your house to take advantage of low electricity prices and clean energy generation. This in turn saves you money and reduces global impact of each home.
There are likely to be a smart version of any device that can plug into a wall. There is a learning curve when setting up a smart house. There are many benefits to setting up a smart home, not to mention the positive impact it has on the environment. Start small with lights, or perhaps one of the most popular smart outlets, and then work your way up.
You can make informed decisions about the products you buy by monitoring your home’s energy usage. This will make a significant impact on your bank account as well as the environment. You can use the Amazon Alexa Energy Dashboard (to see the energy usage of devices connected to your Amazon Alexa Account) to do this. Another way is by having a dedicated device like the Emporia Energy Vue 2 to monitor your home electrical consumption right at the source — the breaker box.
Whether you decide to start small with some outlets and lights in your home or go for a clean slate approach and make anything and everything smart — that first step in making your home more energy efficient is an important one. You have a wide range of smart home products to choose from, making it easier than ever to outfit your home.