Can Smart Thermostats Save Costs?
With the summer sun hitting us right now, everyone’s in search of ways to stay cool without having to break the bank. In fact, there are tons of ways to reduce the energy usage in your home, even when you feel the heat’s coming at you from all directions. Why not consider a smart thermostat?
In recent years, smart thermostats have gained a lot of popularity, but here’s the question on everyone’s minds; are smart thermostats worth the investment? To put simply, a definite yes. Once you’ve experienced the convenience a smart thermostat brings, it changes your life.
Smart thermostats allow you to adjust the temperature of your home at your fingertips, and you don’t have to be home to have it adjusted, as they can be controlled remotely as well. Isn’t this convenient?
Most Americans’ electricity bills tend to come from heating and cooling, hence making climate control a significant contributor to overall energy usage. Most smart thermostats are Wi-Fi connected and have the ability to learn your preferences, schedule, and even you’ve left and got back home.
This is how a smart thermostat learns your schedule and automatically adjusts the temperature of your home spending on your current needs. FirstEnergy Toledo Edison has several smart thermostats on their website, priced reasonably.
That being said, it’s important to understand how a smart thermostat works before you purchase one.
What is a Smart Thermostat?
A regular, already fitted in your home thermostat allows the adjusting of temperature through a control panel fitted onto a wall somewhere in the home. Whereas, a smart thermostat allows you to manage so much more.
With a smart thermostat, you not only control the temperature of your home but also get to use the many features it offers. From the area you spend the most time into what’s your preference of temperature, a smart thermostat has the ability to learn all of it.
You can choose to have your AC switched onbefore you’re home from work, and can further program when to turn it on and off depending on your schedule, the weather, and the number of people at home.
In addition to smart thermostats having a high level of customization, they also provide an overview of how energy is being consumed in your home, revealing the amount of energy needed to keep your home cool in summer and warm in winter.
In fact, some smart thermostats also compare your heater and AC use to that of the average household of your neighborhood. If you’re looking for a boiler, make sure to get what is the Best Combi boiler. Moreover, they provide helpful updates showing the amount of energy you’re spending or saving, and a reminder to conserve energy.
It may sound complicated, but there’s no need to program an extensive custom schedule for your AC and heater to receive energy-saving benefits from a smart thermostat. In other words, you don’t have to do any kind of programming at all.
Since most Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermostats learn from your habits, they automatically develop a schedule. Even so, you can use its app on your smartphone to adjust the heating and cooling of your home.
Do Smart Thermostats Save You Money?
To answer it once and for all, yes smart thermostats can save you money. However, how much money and how quickly they can save you, ultimately depends on one’s heating and cooling habits.
Smart thermostats have long been known to be meticulous when it comes to finding ways on how to conserve energy. You may not see much of a difference in your energy savings even after a year, especially when compared to an average AC user.
That being said, if you made go the extra mile to reprogram the thermostat every couple of months, try to keep the house colder in the winter, warmer in the summer, and switch off the control when leaving home, smart thermostats will inevitably tale a longer time to pay for themselves.
On the other hand, if you were to be less meticulous, you’ll end up saving enough money to cover the costs of a smart thermostat within a year or two.
Conclusion – Does a Smart Thermostat’s Benefits Outweigh its Price?
We can all agree that technology gets attainable and better with every passing year, and that makes smart thermostats no exception. Each new iteration of the smart thermostat technology is more user-friendly, intuitive, and definitely more affordable.
All in all the benefits a smart thermostat brings to your life, outweigh its price tag. They don’t only provide a convenient opportunity to create cost-cutting habits, but also provide an in-depth analysis into energy usage.
Therefore, we’ve come to an understanding that smart thermostats do in fact save costs. It doesn’t happen overnight, but takes time and also requires you to change some of your energy usage habits.
After all, nothing works miraculously, until we put in some amount of effort!