Smart home energy efficiency.
Does automisation of your home make sense?
Let’s start by saying that a smart home can absolutely help with lowering energy usage, but it can also make little difference. It all depends on who is the user of the house and how the system is set-up. Some smart devices are designed entirely around convenience instead of energy saving.
Overall, in most cases it does help with energy savings, with an approximate saving between 10-15% (some companies claiming up to 40%). In addition to that, it can also offers other non-energy related benefits, such as:
Remote control
Convenience
Integrated security system
higher resell value of your home
But let’s get back to energy efficiency.
How can a smart home make your home more energy efficient?
Smart thermostat
A smart thermostat manages a home’s heating and cooling systems. It is easy to automise the necessary temperateures when you are home and away and the system automatically changes the temperature for you.
Smart ventilation system
Ventilation control ensure a healthy climate and comfort in a smart home. People spent up to 90% of their time indoors which makes having a well working ventilation system important.
Automatic lights
Lights can be set to swith off if noone is the house or more specifically, in a room. We also forget sometimes.
Smart power plug sockets
Smart power plug sockets help to save what is called vampire energy (or standby energy) which is lost by having electroncs constantly being plugged in. Lost energy accounts for approximately 10%1 of all our energy use.
Monitoring
Smart home applications allow users to monitor how much energy are they spening on certain actions. This can result in a positive behavioral change.
There are other small influencing factors, such as connecting smart appliences to the system, automated curtains and blinds, smart water heating and leakage systems and sprinkle controllers, but the above 5 are the most influencial and common factors that can save energy.
What are disadvantages of smart homes?
Looking from an energy efficiency perspective, it is difficult to bring out any disadvantages when installation of the smart home is done properly. It is highly likely that a smart home would save on energy use and cost. The disadvantages are of a different kind, the main ones being:
Cost of installation
Dependency of internet
Privacy concerns
Does an automised smart home make sense?
Homes differ in size and the type of owner. Some people would prefer to have a smart home solution which would offer energy efficency devices as well as convenience devides. Others would choose to only invest into energy efficency devices or none at all due to cost or privacy concerns.
A smart home solution that includes many integrated devices can cost in between €1500 – €9000, dependent on the choice of devices. When properly set up, it can save in between 10-20% of energy as well as some time.
A smart thermostat and smart power strips (not sockets) can also be installed as independent devices without an integrated system and have a total cost from €300. These two devices most likely make up the majority of the energy saved.
Everyone can make their list of priorities and do the maths in terms of the pay-back period based on their lifestyle and energy consumption.
As any other electric devices, smart house gadgets will crash, need software updates, switching on and off, reboots. If you go for this option, you need to be ready to manage that once in a while!