Saving Money in Bath with Smart Tech

Modern technology can add enormous convenience to our lives, but it usually comes at a cost. Usually, this is in terms of electricity, where high-tech devices constantly raise our power bills to what we accept as a new normal.

However, there are ways to counter this growth, utilizing technologies that tie directly into newer home appliances and systems. Smart home technology can serve as the basis for these savings, and with the right approach, it can make an appreciable monthly and yearly difference.

What Holds Us Back

As CyberGhost highlights in their study and survey, a few main reasons hold us back from adopting greener environment solutions. The primary reasons are usually financial, which 67% of respondents claimed prevented a more environmentally friendly approach to life.

From here, 36% noted a lack of awareness. Fortunately, smart home tech can reward appreciable financial benefits to make a change, and in articles like this, we hope to raise awareness that could apply no matter where in Bath you reside.

Automation is the Key 

The core of saving money in smart home operations comes from automation. Lack of attention and simply not being around can lead us to non-optimal behaviors that cost us money in a wide range of areas. The simplest of these can be illustrated by forgetting to turn off lights. This might be a rare occasion for some of us, while others might have family members who appear incapable of understanding switches work in both directions. 

Lights perfectly illustrate the smart home advantage in that while they're not expensive to run individually for short amounts of time, everything eventually adds up. Lifehacker explores this idea where many lights left on over time can cost a non-insignificant amount over a year. Smart homes can trigger lights to turn off at specific periods and if no motion is detected or through a range of other personally selected criteria. 

Greater savings can also be found with power plans which factor in peak and non-peak hours. For those on this plan, using electricity in peak hours can add much more to your energy bill, but it can also be difficult to manually schedule heavy use for non-peak hours. Smart home automation can solve this issue, allowing systems to automatically begin and end within a low-cost timeframe. 

Washing and drying clothes has long been a central driver of cost in this regard, but more recently, electric vehicle charging can be the most profound. According to EnergySage, the peak cost of drawing electricity can be over twice as high as that in off-peak hours. Since charging an EV can cost upwards of £50 a month, savings found here over a year are enormous. 

[Google Home Mini Smart Speaker by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr]  

Of course, even if you don’t live in Bath, the potential of smart home technology still applies. Implementing these systems will imply a startup cost and gaining familiarity with the systems, but the learning curve is hardly as steep as you might fear. These are user-friendly, will help your wallet, prevent frustration with less self-aware members of your household, and will eventually become the new status quo. Whether you want to adopt now to save money earlier that’s up to you