Until a few years ago, the following rules applied for saving energy in your own home: switch off the lights when leaving the room. Turn down the heating when ventilating. When cooking, use the residual heat by switching off the stove a few minutes before the end of the cooking time. In today’s smart home, automated home technology takes over the energy management. This significantly reduces energy costs.
People who live in smart homes enjoy a level of luxury that is individually tailored to their needs. They save themselves many unnecessary actions and can control their home remotely. For example, the smart home switches on the lights in the driveway and in the apartment when the owner comes home, but only in the areas he is using. When he leaves the room, the light switches itself off again. The heating can be programmed in a similar way. The apartment will be warm by the time he returns home from work. Should he get back home earlier or work longer, he can notify the smart home controller via an app. In a smart home, no one has to worry about opening and closing the shutters anymore. Smart home systems do this all by themselves, even when the owner is on vacation. In addition, separate modules can be installed for all rooms in the house to help save energy. These include electrical outlets that automatically switch off the stand-by mode of household appliances during prolonged periods of absence and control systems that open and close windows at certain times. The best thing about it is that the energy flow can be precisely determined, evaluated and optimized for each consumer.
Various energy management solutions can be integrated into the home technology for new buildings or retrofitted when modernising existing buildings. Some manufacturers offer so-called power tags, which control the entire power consumption in the power distribution, pass on the values, have them processed with apps and send them to the mobile device. If malfunctions occur in the smart home and loads deviate, for example due to a failure of the refrigerator, the user receives a warning on his device, allowing him to react promptly. Recording the amount of electricity consumed, broken down by time of day and respective consumer, allows conclusions to be drawn about current behaviour in the smart home, especially when consumption is converted into money and predicted as a monthly electricity bill. But intelligent energy management can do even more. There are tips on what can be improved in the control system to save energy.
Many households now have photovoltaic systems or produce part of the electricity they use through wind energy. Well thought-out energy management comes into play here. The energy generators must be intelligently linked to accepting devices such as heat pumps and to the energy storage devices. Automated home technology also does not leave it to chance when and how the batteries of the electrically powered car or e-bike are charged. It stores electricity that is not immediately needed and buys it from other suppliers when it is particularly cheap. In this way all requirements can be met at the desired times. This is called load levelling. Last but not least, this intelligent linking brings ecological advantages.
Anyone who opts for a smart home should not think about installing individual modules, but should seek advice from an expert on a coherent overall concept. If possible, one that can be expanded bit by bit and operates wirelessly. The latter aspect saves the user from having to install additional sockets and cabling later. Furthermore, the budget is not burdened with a single large sum. The user invests as much money in his smart home technology as he wants and, in the end, receives a networked system that meets his requirements.
