By including various energy tools within your Smart Home plan you need to remember that it is not all about saving money. The energy parts of your Smart Home solution also deliver information, intelligence, safety and control.
There is also a lot of crossover with many of the other Smart Home technology that both enable the energy pieces and benefit from them.
The major benefits of a smart energy system include (in no particular order of priority):
Saving money by using less energy
Solar system efficient energy use
Battery storage and usage management
EV charge and discharge
Personal and family safety
Helping Aotearoa New Zealand
Depending on the way you are building your Smart Home and how much intelligence you have available from the hubs or programmable processing, you will have the ability to react to specific energy circumstances and do things or send
messages. So you set your home up to look out for certain conditions relating to your energy usage, and then do something because of it.
You can configure your Smart Home system to deliver responsive energy messages when certain devices are switched on or off, or are using certain levels of energy.
Consider the following examples.
Daily Energy Report
When you have smart energy monitoring devices in your home that measure and record your power consumption, you can have a daily message, at say 6pm, saying something like this: "In the last 24 hours you have used 24.3kWh of energy, which cost $5.10. This is 1.4kWh lower than yesterday and 0.3kWh lower than 7 days ago."
Washing Machine/Dryer Notification
When you have a smart energy monitoring device connected to your washing machine or dryer, your Smart Home will know when it is being used. So, your system could be configured to recognise when the appliance is running and then when the power consumption goes to almost zero a message can be sent to you saying something like this: "Your washing machine/dryer has finished."
'Oven On' Warning
When you have a smart energy monitoring device connected to your electric oven, and if you have some proximity sensing included in your Smart Home system, if you leave your home having left the oven on, you will receive a warning message saying something like this: "You have left the house and left the oven switched on. If this was intentional then please ignore this message."
Many other messages could be configured to enable your Smart Home to interact with you and your family members on matters relating to the energy usage of your home.
Hot Water
When you can monitor the live energy consumption of your hot water cylinder your Smart Home can know if there is hot water there to be used. So, when you ask Alexa, "Is there enough hot water to have a bath?" she can be programmed to let you know.
When you put your Smart Home in 'away' lifestyle mode you can have the hot water system respond accordingly. It could turn off the hot water completely, or just keep the cylinder at a lower temperature until 12 hours before you are due to return and then switch back to everyday mode.
Heat Pump
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EV Charger
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See also
Smart Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging
The Commercial Angle
For many businesses knowing the exact amount of power a customer has consumed could be part of the billing processes. So, using smart energy meters can help you measure the energy consumption in as much detail as you need to.
Automated alerts could be used to let your customers know about their usage and help them make budget decisions too.
Bach Monitoring
When renting a bach or Airbnb property you can use some simple energy meters to check that things like water pumps have not been left on. With a smart switch you can even switch them off yourself.
With an energy meter measuring the power usage for the whole property you can see how much energy is used for each customer and get confirmation that you are charging the appropriate amount for each paying customer.
Customer Energy Pricing
With the more advanced Smart Home EMS you will be able to either enter the current prices you pay for kWh of energy or have the price fed to the system directly from your energy retailer.
Then the energy calculations used for system messaging can also include current values for the energy used.
How to Configure Responsive Messaging
Where to Start
Start with a simple dip into the Smart Home energy world by buying one or more of the smart plugs that include an energy meter. Connect your washing machine and microwave oven to them and start to monitor the power you are consuming with just these few devices.
Create a simple calculator (maybe a spreadsheet) so that you can quickly see both the energy (in kWh) used and the corresponding cost in dollars.
Then start to program your Smart Home system to do something in response to a certain energy consumption amount. (This could be a message or an action like changing a smart LED bulb to a different colour.)
This will start you on your smart energy journey.
See also
Smart Plugs (Wall Sockets and Connectors)
The End Game
The underlying purpose of using Smart Home technology to help manage the energy we use is to reduce the total carbon footprint we as people leave every day.
The actual financial saving we make per day will probably be quite small, and...
The total benefits we seem to receive over the year will not seem very miraculous, but...
The magic starts to happen when three of our friends start to do the same in their home, and...
Three of each of their friends start to make their home smarter with some smart energy features included. Then...
As thousands of homes across Aotearoa New Zealand are all doing this, even in a small way, the impact becomes significant.
Then, as the years move along and even better Smart Home devices become available, you will be able to look back and see a bigger impact you are having. The good energy choices you are making today will be paying off well in your smart energy future.
As with most good things, it usually starts with one person... and that could be you... that should be you... that should be us all...
