Our ancestors never worried about their electric bills donning their 10-gallon hats and tightening their corsets. In fact, it wasn’t until 1925, that even half of Americans had electricity in their homes. Now, electricity is a modern necessity and it’s extremely expensive.
High electricity bills cause families a lot of stress—and divorce-inducing drama. Dad yells, “Shut that refrigerator door!” Mom screams, “Turn down the thermostat!” And the kids couldn’t turn off a light if their lives depended on it.
Fortunately, a professionally-designed smart home from PointCentral will monitor and manage your family’s electricity usage, automatically shut off the lights at key times, and calibrate your thermostat and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems for maximum energy savings—all while saving you a tremendous amount of money.
How Much Energy Do Smart Home Devices Save on Average?
Your smart home could be as simple as a smart thermostat and a handful of smart light bulbs. Or, it could include complete coverage —where every ceiling fan, light fixture and appliance connects to a centralized hub that you control from a smartphone or tablet. The best way to understand the savings potential of a smart home—simple or complicated—is to break it down into the individual components.
A 2018 report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy offers the following averages for savings from the most popular smart home components that we use at PointCentral:
Smart home energy management systems (HEMS): An HEMS is a computer hub that integrates all of your smart home components into a centralized “brain.” At PointCentral, we calibrate your HEMS for maximum energy efficiency. Depending on the devices that make up the HEMS, your average energy savings can be anywhere from 5 to 22 percent.
Smart heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC): The most sophisticated energy-saving strategies incorporate smart HVAC systems. These systems use smart vents, room sensors, local weather information, smart thermostats, occupancy data, room usage data, ceiling fans and other information to maximize the efficiency of heating, cooling and ventilating a home. These systems can save an average of 10 percent on monthly heating and cooling costs.
Smart thermostats: Smart thermostats are quick and easy to install. They learn the behavior and needs of a household over time to heat and cool the home more efficiently. At PointCentral, we use the ENERGY STAR® certified Smart Thermostat from Alarm.com. Independent testing “confirmed that the Alarm.com Smart Thermostat can save homeowners an average between 9 and 16 percent of energy when heating, and 15 and 23 percent when cooling.”
Smart window shades: Smart blinds and shades for your windows reduce or maximize the solar heat levels in your home. In the summertime, the shades stay closed on the eastern side of the home in the morning, and open in the afternoon. They do the opposite in the winter time. These systems can save your home an average of 11 to 20 percent on HVAC costs, and 3 percent on lighting costs.
Smart appliances and smart electronics: Smart appliances like dishwashers and washing machines can change their operation times to non-peak hours when electricity is less expensive. These appliances save families an average of 2 to 9 percent on total energy costs.
Smart lighting: It’s difficult to police everyone in the family when it comes to turning off lights after leaving a room. Smart lighting does this automatically. These systems will dim your lights at key times to reduce energy expenditure, as well. A smart lighting system will save families an average of 7 to 27 percent on their lighting costs.
Smart outlets and smart power strips: A lot of plugged-in electronics are continually draining energy. Smart outlets and smart power strips incorporate “non-smart” electrical devices—like lamps, radios and more—into the smart home network. Through scheduling, load detection and motion sensors, your smart home will power down these devices at key times to save energy. This tech saves households an average of 50 percent on their plugged-in energy needs.
Can You Imagine the Energy Savings for a Thousand Smart Homes?
The above list represents the savings related to the most common “smart” components that PointCentral uses to build fully-integrated smart homes. Other technology could include smart water heaters, smart batteries, smart solar panels and more.
For PointCentral’s enterprise-level real estate and property management clients, saving as much as 22 percent with a complete HEMS in every home under management adds up to a lot of money fast—especially for a firm with thousands of homes in its portfolio.
