This is the big question. The answer is, in one word, no. Being more aware of energy wasted can help you reduce your bill. Do you really need a payment notice to close the lights when you leave a room?
One of the most persuasive results (if not surprising): a few investments in smart technology can make a big difference. In one of the widest studies we looked at, Lockheed Martin Energy was conducted by the New York Energy Research and Development Authority, 50 houses were equipped with full energy screens at home (also known as home energy monitoring systems, or Hems, in industry terms). The conclusion was that investing in three smart technologies should produce the lion’s share of annual energy savings; Smart heat organizations are largely named as the most influential, followed by smart outlets, plots, smart LED lamps or lighting keys. (Links are transmitted to Wirecton’s evidence to these topics, if you want to read more about how to help you save energy. To get advice on how to increase their savings capabilities, see our advice on how to choose between smart keys, ports, and lamps, and we do not use them better. Expectations.
The NYSEREDA study indicates that you can get up to 16 % of the annual energy decrease by installing smart and outlets and lighting together. The common denominator is automation: since these things can be launched according to the timeline, or when it is not needed, or when the room is not occupied, the savings do not depend on you or your colleagues in your home. Keith Marrett, head of clean energy services at GeneraC, chanted a Nyserda study when he told us: “This is exactly what we see in the data. The largest thing that people should look at is their thermostat. If they have a stupid old thermostat, and replace them with smart thermostat.”
In contrast, dependence on energy control to identify potential savings means engaging constantly with it. The available evidence indicates that owners do not do this for a long time and that many savings can be attributed to the most active users – a point that both manufacturers and independent experts we talked to agree on.
“The modernity of the product, which stares in these data, has some short -term behavior benefits, but we believe that in about three months it begins to commit. Activity, paper with application begins to go down,” said Sean McLeulin, founder and chief executive of Emporia Energy, who makes Gen 3 Vue Monitor.
Mike Philips, co -founder and CEO of Sense, described and exchanging many studies that support the savings demand by about 7 % to 10 %, but added that “what is already is the people who really use the app to actively search for savings get about twice that, but about half of people do it.”
“I am obsessed with huge energy, and I still do not know that I have time to sit and search for my data,” said Bethani Sakbarin, the first researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who has been looking for energy screens since 2010. She later added: “There were a lot of studies in which people responded to comments and changing their behavior, but they are not fixed. It is very easy to return to the patterns you feel comfortable with. That’s why I was in those patterns to start.”
In different ways, Keith Marit from GeneraC, Ebony Mayhorn and Josh Butzbau, senior researchers at the National Northwest Laboratory in the Pacific Ocean, expressed the same fears: Energy screens enjoy a short honeymoon when installed for the first time, followed by a decrease in the interest of the owner. The huge amount of data produced by these screens can be paralyzed; Sense’s Phillips also noted: “What we found is that the more data it provides to the consumer, the more confused for them. It comes to the ideas it provides to the owner of the house.”
Energy Observer Manufacturers try to face interest in abandoning the notifications, and some of these alerts provide a really useful data analysis as well as energy saving suggestions-for example, you may get alerts, based on increased energy use, indicating that a specific device is starting to fail and will need to be replaced soon, or that the use of total energy has suddenly turned. Every manufacturer we talked to them noted that the monitors often find creative alternative uses of screen data. Both Phillips and McLauthlin mentioned that they and others have set up notifications from their screens to follow when the garage opens and closes as a way to supervise the family respondents and go. (Grant Clauser, Wirecster Editor for Smart-Tech coverage, note that a smart garage control unit or even a smart movement sensor can do the same for less money.) Marret told us that many customers are monitoring the high afternoon energy-which was photographed by turning lights and video games-knowing that their children have reached home from school.
There is already a range of products that can make a data collection function to monitor energy, add control, coordination and automation over it.
The manufactured teacher and independent experts who spoke with all another possible use of the screens: identifying vampire or fake loads, where devices and devices draw energy even when they are not in active use. But our sources were inversely taking the practical value of this knowledge. “We see a lot of homes, when they are installed for the first time, with basic vampire loads hovering about 2 kilowatts. This is huge,” said Keith Marit of GeneraC. That is. But the question is, how many vampire loads that can be eliminated realistically? Turn completely turning off the device, or turns it off, turning off the power bar that is connected to it, or installing a cord or a smart port and using it to stop the energy from remote. Bethany Sparn in NREL is that people are likely to do so, as well as from the possibility of automatic and scheduled closure to make a big difference: “It is difficult to find things you really want to turn off a specific schedule that does not affect the use of the device.” SParn also indicated that the manufacturers of devices and devices have taken great efficiency steps in recent years: “The things that have been a big problem in vampire loads have improved.” “It is a good thing, but it also means that there is a lower chance.”
More importantly, there is another common note that arose in our research and interviews: The spread of smart technologies and standards such as material may soon make complete energy screens at home or at least oceanic. From the simplest devices (smart ports or plugs) to smart devices (refrigerators, washing machines, and the like) to smart electric panels that can monitor a full house and allow the home owner to control the use of individual circuits, and a group of products is already available that can perform data collection functions to monitor energy, control, format, and authentic energy.
Ebony Mayhorn, who has been studying energy screens for more than a decade in the northwestern Pacific laboratory, summarized her point of view on it in this way: “I have always seen that this is a block technology between what we are now … and what we look forward to, where devices and devices are more intelligent and can talk to each other and can report their energy consultations.
