Heating & AC

Increase Comfort & Save Energy

In the US, heating and air conditioning use typically account for 40% or more of a total home energy budget. Careful monitoring and control of these vital home technologies is critical for comfort, energy conservation, and savings. Smart home automation helps you do this conveniently and economically, while reducing your carbon footprint.

Most homes today have at least a basic wall-mounted thermostat that turns the heat on when the home temperature drops below a pre-set limit, and then off when the desired temperature is reached. With air conditioning, the thermostat does the reverse; it turns the cooling on when a pre-set temperature is exceeded, then off again when the room comes down to the desired temperature.

Multi-zone heating and air-conditioning provides a thermostat for each zone. The thermostat for bedrooms, for example, might be set for lower heating (and higher air-conditioning) temperatures.

A time-based thermostat adds additional control. It allows household members to pre-set different heating (and air conditioning) temperatures, depending on the time of day, and perhaps to vary these settings by the day of the week.

A typical setting might be 68 degrees for the weekday wake-up time of 6:30 am, re-setting automatically to 62 degrees at 8:30 am—after everyone has left for school or work—then back to 68 at 5:00 pm for dinner and relaxation, and finally back to 62 for the sleeping hours. Weekend days and nights can have different schedules, depending on the family needs and activities.

An internet-enabled, remotely-controlled thermostat can further increase convenience, comfort, and energy savings—by allowing modification of the settings as needed while away from home.

Example: You decide to spend an extra day on vacation, but don’t want to waste energy while you are gone. So you remotely re-adjust the home thermostat to reflect the temporary change in your schedule. You use your smartphone to log on to your thermostat, and push back the day and time for the resumption of normal thermostat settings.

But perhaps there was a glitch: Unfortunately, you twisted your ankle on the last day of skiing, and are now back at home in bed. So you can now use your smartphone to check the mid-day room temperature and make any needed adjustments, without getting out of bed.

For air conditioning, the principles are the same, just reversed. Example: it’s only noon, but it’s already sweltering at work, and you’re exhausted. Your boss suggests that you go home early for some quality rest.

But you can’t face a hot bedroom. So you grab your smartphone and override the normal time when your AC thermostat is programmed to step back from 78 degrees to 72, and tell it do it now! Maybe you’ll even dial it back to 68 today, for a little extra comfort.

The new learning thermostats can keep track of when people are actually in the home —or in a particular zone, if the home has multi-zone heating/AC, with separate thermostats for each zone. They then use this information to predictively adjust temperatures—based on past family behavior—in anticipation of when the space is likely to be occupied. This can save even more on energy bills.

Caution: make sure the learning thermostat is carefully password protected. Burglars would love to see a schedule to your daily routines—so they could break in when no one is scheduled to be home for a few hours.

Wirelessly regulating heating and air conditioning optimizes energy use, and adds comfort and convenience to your daily life. And it can quickly pay for itself through energy savings.

How much you’ll save, and how quickly, depends on the construction of your home, your local climate, heating and cooling preferences, and the cost of energy. For more information, see Photo-Voltaic Solar Energy; The Solar Energy Business is Changing