5 Ways Smart Thermostats Can Save You Money and Time

Generally, a smart thermostat serves the same purpose as a manual thermostat: it controls the temperature in your home. However, smart thermostats take home climate control a step further. They improve temperature regulation, energy efficiency, and energy consumption rates, which typically results in cost savings.

If you’re moving into a new home, you may want to consider installing a smart thermostat as soon as possible. Doing so will allow your smart thermostat to quickly learn your heating and cooling needs, which can help you keep your utility bills lower than they would have been otherwise from the moment you move in. Continue reading to learn the five ways smart thermostats can save you money and time.

1. A Smart Thermostat Learns Your Behavior

It’s not always easy to remember to adjust the thermostat before you leave your home. With that in mind, smart thermostats like a Google Nest thermostat learn your behaviors within just a few days.

What does it mean that a smart thermostat learns your behavior? Well, it learns to automatically turn on and off or up and down depending on whether you’re home, what time of day it is, what the outside temperature is, etc.

A Google Nest thermostat or other smart thermostat uses sensors to tell when you’re home and when you’re away. Smart thermostats still give you the option to control your energy settings manually (from anywhere at any time) using an app on your mobile device.

2. A Learning Thermostat Means Less Time Making Adjustments

The best smart thermostats on the market (i.e., Nest Learning thermostats, Ecobee thermostats, etc.) ensure that you spend less time worrying about making the temperature in your home comfortable and more time living your life.

Smart thermostats allow the use of sensors in multiple rooms. If used properly, they automatically regulate the room temperature without you needing to run back and forth to the thermostat yourself.

Devices like Google Nest also learn how many times you adjust the thermostat, when you typically adjust it, and what temperatures you prefer.

Additionally, a smart thermostat learns how long it takes to heat a room or cool it down. Therefore, it uses high-energy output as little as possible and quickly returns to energy saving mode.

3. Easy to Understand Energy Consumption Information

A smart thermostat can easily integrate with most smart home systems. Being tapped into all of that information allows devices like the Google Nest thermostat to track and compare your home’s energy consumption every month.

You can use this information to understand where and when your HVAC system is working the hardest and make needed adjustments.

Though it’s possible to make adjustments on your own for each room and hallway in your home, most smart thermostats do a great job of automatically regulating temperature and energy consumption without help.

4. Save Energy With Automatic Home And Away Mode

At first glance, the automatic home and away feature included with devices like Google Nest appears to be nothing more than a manually programmable thermostat.

However, a closer inspection reveals that smart thermostats do more than just turn on and off at certain times. Nest Learning thermostats (and similar smart thermostats) help to cut energy costs with home and away modes by:

• Automatically switching to away mode if it does not sense you at home
• Automatically switch from away mode to home mode if you break your normal routine

5. Overall Energy Cost Savings

Before the invention of devices like Nest Learning thermostats, efficiently programming and monitoring your thermostat required skill and time. However, a smart thermostat essentially teaches itself to decrease your energy consumption while increasing and maintaining your comfort.

Regularly utilizing monthly energy reports produced by a smart thermostat can:

• Inform you of what devices use the most energy in your home
• Understand how the outside temperature affects your home’s energy consumption
• See what rooms require your HVAC system to work the hardest
• Reduce your HVAC system’s workload and prolong its life
• Make you eligible for additional cost savings offered by your utility company

In case you’re curious, the Nest thermostat currently costs around $250.

How to Install a Smart Thermostat to Maximize Energy Saving

The best smart thermostat installation advice usually includes information about adjusting your settings. In addition to the adjustments you can make on your mobile device app, many more technical options are available to help you improve your home’s energy efficiency.

For example, some third-party apps allow you to use “If-then” statements like “[If] the window in the living room is open, [then] turn off the thermostat.”

Smart thermostats tend to save more money when you have a smart home HVAC system and sensors in most of your rooms.

Further, you may be eligible for certain rebates from your utility company after installing your smart thermostat. In many cases, rebates can help you offset the costs of smart thermostat purchase and installation.

If you’re about to move to a new home and are considering a smart thermostat, we can help.

SmartMove partners with leading home internet providers to help you keep your smart thermostats and other smart devices in sync. Get connected to a high-speed internet provider in your area today.