Is your TV left in standby mode a lot, even if there’s no-one at home to watch? Do you leave your heating running all night? In private households, we waste a lot of energy simply because it’s more convenient to leave an appliance on than to constantly keep switching it on and off once we need it. But why exactly is this an issue?

There are two good reasons to tackle energy wastage in the home: On the one hand, lower energy consumption is better for the environment – which is a particularly important factor in the age of climate change.

And reducing your energy consumption has tangible benefits closer to home, too: You’ll see the effects reflected on your energy bills almost immediately. Intelligently connected Smart Home solutions help you to minimise your energy consumption to the level that your appliances actually need to operate. Here are our top tips to help you save energy easily and conveniently.

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Convenient and efficient: Save energy with smart heating controls

If you want to reduce your heating bills, you can begin with a few familiar rules that we can all follow:

1. Keep windows closed while the heating is on.

2. Turn the heating down when your windows are open.

3. Avoid heating your home unnecessarily during the night or when you’re not in.

These are all very simple principles – but they also mean that your home will be cold and unwelcoming when you return from a holiday or emerge from under the duvet in the morning.

But there’s another solution: Smart thermostats such as tado° make this problem a thing of the past – reducing your heating bills by up to 30 percent without impacting your comfort.

With this technology, you can create routines to warm your home and control your heating from an app while you travel. This means that you can look forward to a shiver-free shower in the morning and return to a cosy living room after a hard day’s work – without any energy being wasted. Another unique feature of this technology is location detection, which enables smart thermostats to work out when you’re not at home. They use this data to control your heating automatically, without you having to lift a finger. Handy, right?

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How can smart blinds help me save energy?

Blinds also have an effect on the temperature in your room and have an important role to play in any energy-saving drive. Equipped with a time-switch function and brightness sensors, systems such as the Gira KNX weather station can help you achieve perfect home automation: During the winter, your smart blinds will raise automatically when the sun is high enough to warm your room. When darkness falls, the blinds are lowered to prevent the room from cooling down overnight.

The technology helps you save energy in summer, too: Before the sun gets the chance to heat up your room, the blinds are lowered to keep the heat out and maintain a comfortable inside temperature. What’s more, smart blinds can also help to protect your home against break-ins; the automated sequences will put off potential intruders by making them think that someone might be at home.

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Smart shower heads help you save water

Alongside the systems you use to heat your home, the appliances that heat up your water are another major consumer of energy. Your daily shower is a great place to start making energy savings: Just think how many litres of water go down the drain before the shower gets up to temperature. Smart Home technologies put an end to this wastage: Intelligent shower heads such as EvaDrop only activate the flow of water once your preferred temperature has been reached.

But that’s not all this clever shower head does. While you enjoy your shower, it continues working to help you make savings: A motion sensor detects how far away you are from the flow of water and regulates the supply accordingly, delivering a full-pressure flow when you’re washing your hair, and reducing the flow to perhaps 80 or even 40 percent while you lather up. You can also compare your shower statistics with others, which encourages more careful use of water.

How the “EvaDrop” works. Source: EvaDrop Smart Shower / YouTube

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Cleverly connected: The easy way to save electricity

You can also make huge savings on your electricity bills. Lighting accounts for 10 percent of household energy consumption – but how often do we forget to switch off the lights when we leave the room? Appliances that are left in standby mode are also a potential source of savings; these devices continue to consume energy even when you think you’ve switched them off. Smart sockets are a great solution to this problem: These centrally connected devices enable you to turn off entire groups of appliances at the touch of a button, using an intelligent central control unit such as the Gira HomeServer.

The Gira HomeServer is also equipped with a host of other useful functions: It provides visual data on your energy consumption and uses a red and amber traffic light system to let you know if it is significantly higher than the same period in the previous year. With this data at your fingertips, you can identify energy-saving potential in your home and adjust your gas, water and electricity usage accordingly – making it easy for you to manage the energy consumption of your Smart Home.

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“Smart grids” – Intelligent use of energy

Smart grid technology is also increasing in prevalence. These sophisticated networked connections between energy generators and energy consumers enable you to respond in the most appropriate way to any supply scenario.

If there is excess energy in the system, for example, you might choose to do your laundry while energy costs are lower, or charge your home batteries – which will help you meet your energy needs if the supply runs low.

Smart grids made simple. Source: youknow / YouTube

Our tips prove that smart technology can help you achieve significant energy savings in your home – fully automated and without any compromises on comfort or convenience.

Reducing your consumption will have a positive impact on the environment and on your wallet.

Did you know just how much energy you could save with smart technology? Do you have any other tips to share? Let us know in the comments!

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