It doesn’t matter if you are looking to save money or if you are looking to do your part in saving the planet, there are plenty of good options available to improve your energy-saving efforts.
Knowing how much you are paying in energy bills and how much your appliances are costing you can be important if you want to regulate how much you are spending on utility bills. It’s also important to optimize your energy usage for maximizing savings. There are apps available that can provide you with a much more accurate view of how much energy you are using. You can also leverage these apps to maximize your energy efficiency.There are companies that measure indoor air quality and improves CO2 levels, reducing the risk of airborne viruses spreading and helping make everyone feel safer.
1. Company Apps
One of the best things you can do is download your energy company’s app (if applicable). A lot of energy companies will have apps that will give you detailed usage patterns and more. This is particularly true if you have a smart meter installed.
2. Smart Home Apps
These apps can give you a lot of important details on your energy usage. If you have a smart thermostat such as Nest by Google, you will be able to use the built-in app to figure out how much energy you are using. This will give you a lot of information that you can use to optimize your energy usage and change your patterns to improve efficiency or even for air quality monitoring. You’ll find other smart home brands offering other energy-saving apps too. For instance, Samsung’s SmartThings app will give you a lot of information from their SmartThings hub which can connect to a lot of your smart home appliances and products.
3. Timer Apps
Using timers for things like showers and washing dishes can be a good way to manually figure out how much water you are using. While this is a much less accurate way of tracking things, it can give you a better view of how much water you’re using. You could try to keep your showers under 5 minutes to make a difference in the amount of water you waste while bathing. You could also track to see how much you are using while washing dishes manually and compare it to how much you would use while using the machine for light loads. These things can help you not only figure out how much you are using to see how much you are spending, but they can also help you find little ways to improve your usage patterns to do your part in saving the planet.
4. Energy Cost Calculator
This is always a good thing to have on your phone according to Corgi. You want to have an energy cost calculator on your phone so you can figure out how much you are spending daily when it comes to energy usage. You can get smart plugs that will tell you how much a specific appliance or electronic is using. This can give you a good idea of how much it’s costing to operate it. You can also just look at the manufacturer’s site. For instance, if you are trying to figure out how much it costs to use your coffee maker, look to see how much kWh it uses. Then, you simply figure out how much you use it per day, week, or month. From there, you can enter the information into an energy cost calculator and figure out the estimated cost of running the appliance. You can find these apps available on either the Google Play Store or the App Store on iOS.
5. Meter Readings
The meter readings from your energy provider may be difficult to read if you’re not familiar with them. Because of this, you could always download and use a much more user-friendly application on your phone. You would use it by entering your tariff details on your phone for everything including your electricity, water, and gas. From there, you can upload all of your meter readings and the app will automatically generate graphs on how much you are using, your usage patterns, and how much it’s costing you. These graphs and the data can be exported into Google Sheets if needed. You can find this app available on the App Store on iOS devices.
