Depending on where you live, the best candidate to save energy in your home is a smart thermostat. These devices offer the ability to monitor and adjust your home’s temperature even when you are away. More importantly, they can be used to automatically turn down your heating and cooling when it’s not needed. Here are some cool things you can do with these products:
- If your household operates on a typical schedule, set your heating and cooling to ease off when you don’t need it, using a smart phone or tablet app. Or, some products will even learn your schedule on their own!
- If you don’t have pets or plants and are going away for extended periods of time, tell your thermostat to ease way off – keep your home protected from freezing pipes and such, but don’t waste energy keeping your furniture’s feet warm. When you’re returning, you can turn the system back on remotely, so the house is comfortable when you arrive.
- Some ENERGY STAR certified smart thermostats provide monthly reports of energy usage which you can use to compare performance over time.
- ENERGY STAR smart thermostats can be controlled remotely. If you forget to change the thermostat before you leave for vacation, you can adjust it from anywhere with a cellular connection.
- Many smart thermostats can automatically determine when your home is empty and ease off on your heating and cooling system. For instance, they might do so using geofencing (detecting whether mobile devices you identify are nearby) or direct presence detection.
