22.05.2024

SAVING WITH A SMART HOME SYSTEM

Recently, smart home devices have become increasingly popular. Such solutions did not exist 10 or 15 years ago, now we can choose from a wide range of products and customize smart solutions to meet our individual needs. A smart home is supposed to provide us with benefits such as comfort, convenience, security. Many users opt for them for the sake of the cost-saving issue. When we buy smart switches and outlets, will our electricity bills start to drop? This and other questions will be answered in our post.

Will smart switches lower electricity bills? Can a smart home system reduce energy consumption? How to use a smart home system to save money?

Growing awareness of rational management of electricity consumption, as well as rising electricity prices, are prompting the search for solutions that could help minimize the takeoff. Both in traditional media and on the Internet, more and more articles are appearing on how to use a smart home system to reduce energy consumption. It is becoming popular to ask whether it is worth investing in smart lighting or smart thermostats. The most important feature that a smart home has is the combination of different, often seemingly unrelated parameters. Even if we replace every switch in the house with a smart one, but don’t use its functions, we won’t see an effect. Meanwhile, the temperature level and operation of the air conditioner are related to the current season, humidity level or sunshine.

What in the house consumes the most electricity?

One of the main energy devourers in the home are household appliances, such as the refrigerator and washing machine One of the main energy devourers in the home are household appliances, such as the refrigerator and washing machine As research on the application of smart home systems shows, the biggest difference in the aspect of energy consumption can be achieved by applying smart home solutions to air conditioning. This one has been gaining popularity in our country for a long time, and every year, more and more Poles appear using such a facility. We also have appliances that seemingly do not draw much power, so we often ignore them. . We leave the lamp by the door all night because we don’t want to go down to turn it off, the radio in the kitchen, laptops and phones that are perpetually charging… It gets a lot, and if you multiply it by the number of days in a month, it can add up to a nice amount.

How can you optimize energy use? How to save energy using a smart home system?

First of all, it is important to remember that smart devices are just tools in our hands. It all depends on how we use them and how we manage our smart home. . In order for the smart home to help manage energy consumption rationally, we need to adapt it to our lifestyle and frequency of use of home appliances. In order for the smart home to help manage energy consumption rationally, we need to adapt it to our lifestyle and frequency of use of home appliances. Thanks to them, we can minimize the risk of situations in which equipment remains on without our knowledge and control. . And although creating the optimal scenarios for us on our own requires a moment of concentration and working out the most satisfactory schedules, the end result will allow us not only to minimize energy waste, but above all to increase the comfort of living in our apartment.

Below are examples of scenarios through which we can reduce energy consumption:

Example 1.

In our apartment, no one is home from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, and the household members usually go to bed around 11:00 pm.
Let’s set a scenario in the app that will turn off the lights in all rooms from 8:00-16:00 and from 23:00 to 6:00. And in the winter period between 8:00-16:00, additionally, it will turn off the heating for the time when no one is home.
And in the winter period between 8:00-16:00, additionally, it will turn off the heating for the time when no one is home.

For this scenario, devices such as:

gate
light switches
smart socket
smart thermostat

Example 2.

One of the most energy-consuming appliances is air conditioning. If you have an air conditioner and external blinds, together with our Smart Home Keemple system, you can take care of proper temperature regulation in your apartment. and then turn it off when the apartment has already cooled down to the optimal temperature. This way, , you won’t forget to turn off the air conditioner because the app will do it for you.

For this scenario, devices such as:

gate
door and window opening sensor
curtain switch

Why choose devices based on Z-Wave protocol? Do Z-Wave devices consume less electricity?

First of all, we should always get acquainted with the technical parameters of the smart device we are interested in and check the energy consumption for the specific model chosen.

When creating our Keemple smart home system, we chose the Z-Wave protocol, among other reasons, because of the aspect of energy consumption. Z-Wave technology was developed by ZenSys specifically for smart devices and creating smart homes. Devices that communicate with each other wirelessly in a Z-Wave network are characterized by lower energy consumption than those that operate on the basis of a classic WiFi network. This is because in the case of Z-Wave devices, signals are sent only at specific time intervals or in response to the occurrence of a specific event, such as waking them up through a specific action. The rest of the time they remain in rest (standby) mode minimizing power consumption. Therefore, when choosing your smart home system, if you want to take into account the aspect of low energy consumption, choose devices based on Z-Wave technology.