What is energy efficiency?
Energy efficiency is essentially about making good use of our consumption.
Something is energy efficient when it consumes a lower than average amount of energy to carry out an activity.
Avoiding wasting the energy we consume on a daily basis is very important for the conservation of the environment and for your day-to-day savings.
Today we are going to tell you how your smart home can help you achieve energy efficiency, because it never hurts to have a little help.
Energy waste in the world
According to data from the latest World Energy Statistical Yearbook study, a total volume of energy equivalent to 13,813 megatonnes of oil was consumed in 2019. To put this in context, 98% of this enormous amount of energy was wasted, according to the Index of Economic Prosperity and Energy Productivity.
If we analyse what causes all this waste, it is clear that it is caused by inefficient technologies, losses in the transport of these energy resources (most of which are fossil fuels) and the general ignorance of users regarding the impact of their actions on efficiency.
All this energy waste has consequences at various levels: economic, social, political… But the most serious effects are felt by the environment.
Impact on the environment
Most of the energy sources we use today are still the aforementioned fossil fuels, which, moreover, are limited and will one day run out.
The way it is produced is the main cause of the increase in greenhouse gases (such as CO2) which, in turn, are responsible for climate change and high levels of concentration in the atmosphere.
The causes of the presence of these gases such as melting ice, rising sea temperatures or desertification have been highlighted for years and the conclusion is always the same: we urgently need to change our consumption habits and make them much more efficient.
If you want to start acting more efficiently, we recommend that you start by calculating your carbon footprint and create your plan to reduce it. In the meantime, we want to give you more solutions and we are going to tell you how your smart home can help you to be more efficient.
A home allied with energy efficiency
There are many more ways than we think to be more efficient and save energy at home: drying clothes in the sun, charging washing machines and dishwashers, switching off devices that are not being used, making sure you close the windows if you have turned on the air conditioning… But, now your smart home is capable of making you achieve this energy efficiency with little effort. How? Thanks to the connection and communication of the elements of your smart system and its ability to perform actions automatically.
Your Smart home helps you achieve energy efficiency
A smart home is based, as you may already know – if you have taken a look at our blog – on an ecosystem in which devices are interconnected and intercommunicated. They also work autonomously, taking into account your preferences or environmental conditions. So your smart home can help you to be more efficient for the following reasons:
- Turn off the heating or air conditioning if you leave doors or windows open.
- Turns off the heating or air conditioning if your home maintains the temperature you have set as ideal.
- Allows you total control over your energy consumption, warning you whenever it is above your usual level.
- It regulates the level of light inside and outside, taking into account the lumens of the outdoor environment; turning off unnecessary lights and/or lowering the brightness.
- If you have a garden, your smart home takes into account the weather conditions to activate or not the watering.
- If appliances such as hobs or irons are left on and your home detects no activity, your smart home switches them off and notifies you so that you can do the same from wherever you are via an app or voice command.
- You can also coordinate your app to monitor and manage the charging of your electric vehicles.
And these are just some of the ways your smart home can help you with energy savings and efficiency, but there are many more. To avoid wasting energy, we all have to do our bit. From here we wanted to present you with the smartest solution.
It is up to all of us to reverse the effects of energy waste.
