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An estimated 32% of the US’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from burning fossil fuels for electricity generation.
However, the path to clean energy doesn’t need to mean going back to an age before electricity.
Rather, smart home and power-saving devices enable us to reduce our carbon footprint while maintaining our expected standard of living.
Furthermore, you’ll find that these smart home devices elevate your standard of living and make adopting The Clean Energy Life easy and worthwhile.
So without further ado, here are the nine best smart home devices to save energy and money.
Smart thermostats help reduce energy consumption from heating and cooling devices, which often run uninterrupted during the day, even when you’re not home.
The benefit of a smart thermostat is that you can program it to reduce or raise your home’s temperature when you’re not around to help you save energy.
Many smart thermostats, including the Google Nest, also incorporate machine learning to automate temperature regulation based on your habits and the outside temperature.
According to EnergyStar, a smart thermostat can save you 8% annually on utility bills, which will pay for itself in 1-2 years.
Traditionally, monitoring energy usage involved being able to read your utility bill–which is more difficult than you might think–and gave you no insight into the individual energy usage of your devices.
However, energy monitors have changed the game entirely. These devices can be attached to an AC cable that runs to your meter to monitor how much energy is being used at any given moment.
Monitors like the Sense enable you to monitor your energy usage digitally over a phone or computer to see which individual devices use the most power.
By seeing how much energy each device uses, you can find ways to limit your usage to save money.
Conventional wisdom would tell you that once we turn our devices off, they cease to use any power. However, that’s not the case.
Vampire energy is used when electronic devices are plugged into an outlet, despite not being on.
While it may seem minuscule, vampire energy may account for as much as 20% of your electric bill.
Smart plugs and powerstrips are designed to eliminate vampire energy by detecting when a device is in standby mode. As a result, you can save a small amount of money each month by cutting off that power source, which will compound with each smart powerstrip you install.
Smart plugs work similarly if you don’t want to invest in a whole power strip.
These devices also protect against dangers, such as circuit overload, giving you another reason to invest.
Smart lights combine the power-saving technology of LED lights with the sophistication of smart technology so that you can wirelessly control your smart lights from a phone or tablet.
Thanks to LED technology, smart lights will automatically reduce power consumption while also allowing you to program your lights to dim or shut off when you are not home.
Again, this saves a small amount of energy that may compound with other power-saving devices to deliver noticeable reductions in your electricity bill.
One smart home product people are often unaware of is the smart home water sprinkler.
Most sprinkler systems can be a huge source of wasted power and water consumption, especially if you live in hotter climates down south.
Smart sprinkler systems reduce water usage by connecting to your Wi-Fi, enabling them to monitor weather reports so that they will only water your lawn when necessary.
Products like Hydrawise include leak detection systems and even interact with local, virtual weather stations to determine their watering schedule.
These power-saving devices also allow for water usage monitor reports so that you can track how much water you consume.
One major obstacle to EV adoption is the hesitancy to install a charging station that increases your electric bill.
However, smart charging stations help alleviate this worry by charging your EV during downtimes in your electric usage so that you don’t increase your peak electricity demand. Further, these devices can be programmed to charge overnight when most convenient and will cease charging once full, so you don’t waste electricity.
Finally, you can maximize the savings of your smart devices by powering them with your solar panel system. For example, battery powered appliances like lawn mowers, whole home power banks, leaf blowers, power tools and outdoor home cameras and security devices, (RING for example), can all be powered by you if you use solar panels for your main power source for these devices.
This approach is also more reliable than purchasing cheap solar-powered appliances, like outdoor lights, which are notorious for malfunctioning.
Upgrading to a smart device helps you save money by reducing your energy consumption and making your life more convenient.
As you’ll learn throughout your transition to The Clean Energy Life, the drive toward sustainability is not just about making our lives cleaner but also better and more efficient.
Driving the clean energy movement one step at a time and making a positive impact on the environment.
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