Are your energy bills higher than they were last year? A lot of people have seen spikes in their home energy bills due to staying home during the quarantine.
The solution would be to use some energy-saving measures at home. This can be difficult when your family is coming and going 24/7 and your kids have learned how to adjust the AC. Even so, there’s a solution without becoming a safety guard for your family thermostat.
We have the technology that makes it easy to save energy and money by automating your home’s cooling, heating, lighting, and much more. Using Alarm.com’s ENERGY STAR® accredited smart thermostat, here is how a smart home system installed by All Systems Integrated can cut your energy bills down to size.
1: Conserve energy whenever you leave home
The greatest waste of energy is warming your home to a comfortable heat whenever you’re not there. This smart thermostat prevents that by setting the temperature when you’re away. It does this because it works with your alarm system and a technology called Geo-Services that knows whenever you’re leaving. It even knows when you’re on your way home.
Geo-services uses your phone, with the Alarm.com application, as a trigger to adjust your thermostat (along with other devices) based on your location to your home. Your thermostat will use it in order to save on save energy whenever your family goes out, then dial the relaxation up as you arrive home again.
2: Stop cooling the outdoors
Another advantage of a thermostat that is connected to your alarm system is that it knows when a door or window is left open.
If you forget to close the rear door allowing summer heat inside, Alarm.com’s smart thermostat can be set to turn your AC down. You might even set up an alert when this happens so you could close the door yourself. As soon as it closes, your AC returns to normal. No need to do anything on your part!
3: Automate your lighting
Lightbulbs have come a long way to energy efficiency, but you could cut down on waste by automating them.
Alarm.com powered smart lighting connects to your alarm system. This may turn on and off based on the time of day, when it gets dark, or whether you’re home. They’re also easy to control with Scenes: our multi-device commands that make controlling your home as easy as pressing a single button.
Smart lights may be an excellent way to ward off intruders too. Giving the appearance of someone being home is just another great incentive to adding automated lighting to your smart security system.
4: Control energy-wasting devices
A hidden source of energy waste in your house are the appliances that use energy whenever you think they’re switched off. This ‘standby waste’ or ‘phantom loads’ might be accountable for up to 10% of your electricity bill. The worst culprits include televisions, game consoles, DVRs, cable boxes, and coffee machines.
Alarm.com powered smart plugs allow you to remove this waste by cutting the power source to these devices whenever you do not desire them. You can control your smart plugs along with your Alarm.com application, use them with a voice-activated Scene, or schedule them to turn off at nighttime.
If conserving energy is on your to-do list this summer, give All Systems Integrated a call or by contacting us via our form. We’ll be sure to answer any questions you have about saving energy in your home and provide you with a complimentary estimate on your new energy-saving automated system.