Energy
Cut Costs with Convenience: Energy Savings through Home Automation
Dec 5, 2024
Did you know that home automation can help make your life and your home more efficient?
For example, you can easily automate your home’s temperature with a smart thermostat to use less energy while you’re away or overnight. You can also connect common household appliances like computers, televisions, gaming consoles, or portable heaters to smart plugs and gain full control over when those appliances turn on and off to use less energy.
In this post, we’ll explore some simple home automation ideas based on everyday devices you might already have in your home and show you how the TELUS SmartEnergy service delivers the ease of energy consumption and management in a single app.
Cut your spending and increase your comfort with a smart thermostat
The heating and cooling in the average Canadian home equals about ⅔ of the entire home’s energy use(1). That’s why one of the simplest but most impactful ways to automate your home and maximize your energy efficiency is with a smart thermostat.
A smart thermostat can be automatically controlled by customized routines that will automatically adjust the heat or air conditioning in your home to help you use less energy and save money on your monthly energy bills.
Here are a few examples of simple smart thermostat routines:
Rise and shine: Automatically start warming up the house 30 minutes before your usual wake-up time, and turn it down by a few degrees 30 minutes after everyone leaves the house for the day.
Home sweet home: Automatically turn up the temperature or air conditioner in your home 30 minutes before you’re set to return home and automatically turn it back down again overnight.
Power up your energy savings with smart plugs
Did you know that even when electronics are turned off, they are still using energy if they are plugged in?
Commonly referred to as “vampire draw”, “phantom power drain”, “stand-by” or “always on”, this energy use can equal up to 40% of an appliance’s total energy(2) consumption per year.
If you plug your everyday household appliances into an energy-reporting smart plug, you can not only learn about how much energy you’re using to make more informed choices, but you can create simple automation routines that will put a stop to phantom energy drain.
Some of the most impactful appliances you connect with smart plugs are:
- Televisions and cable boxes
- Gaming consoles
- Portable air conditioners or space heaters
- Computers and other home office equipment like monitors and printers
Here are a few examples of simple smart plug routines:
Game on: Automatically turn on your gaming console, television and sound bar in your living room every night at 8pm; and turn it off again at midnight.
Work from home: Automatically turn on your desk lamp, laptop computer, monitor, and printer every weekday at 8:00 AM. Turn all of these devices off again at 5:00 PM.
Getting started with home automation
SmartEnergy
offers you convenience, control and automation of your connected devices in one easy app.Let’s get started!
- Subscribe to the SmartEnergy service.
SmartEnergy is the first service available in the SmartHome+ app. It provides the ease of automation coupled with the convenience and information of energy monitoring. - Set up your smart devices.
The SmartHome+ app is compatible with theKasa Matter Smart Plug w/ Energy Monitoringand theHoneywell Home T9 smart thermostat. You can purchase these devices when you subscribe to SmartEnergy. - Monitor your energy consumption.
Track how much energy your connected devices are using on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This can help you adjust your usage and use less energy to save more money on your monthly utility bills. - Build your automations.
You can create automation routines as simple or as complex as you like. You can start with some of the simple suggestions we provided in this post, or you can combine your smart thermostat and smart plug routines together to make the most out of your SmartEnergy subscription.
Here are a few suggestions:
Away for the weekend: Automatically turn down the temperature or air conditioner in your home and turn off all your home office equipment, televisions, and gaming consoles 30 minutes after you leave for the weekend.
Done for the day: Automatically turn off your desk lamp, laptop computer, monitor, and printer every weekday at 5:00 PM. At the same time, automatically turn on the TV, gaming console and sound system in your living room.
SmartHome+ brings your home to life
SmartHome+ brings your home to life
As you get more familiar with the SmartHome+ app, you’ll see how easy it is to bring your home automation ideas to life!
Subscribe to SmartEnergy today
and start enjoying the everyday savings and convenience of home automation.
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