Seven ways to throw away your money
Energy prices continue to rise, and there is no indication that things might change. Currently, the energy costs make up a large portion of any household's budget. Sadly, it's often our own fault, because the way we use electricity in our home significantly increases our energy’s spending. Below you will find seven fast and easy ways to waste energy and a number of ideas, on how the smart house system can decrease your spending.
1. Do not use dimmers
Lighting is nowadays one of the most important elements of every household. We used to limit ourselves to a few weak light bulbs, but nowadays we employ a variety of light sources, including energy-saving LED lamps and high-power halogen lamps. This type of lamps offers great illumination and is perfect for a living room or a kitchen table, but also uses up a lot of energy. We don't always need that much light.
GRENTON smart dimmers will allow you to adjust the illumination to your needs with a single move. By decreasing illumination intensity by half you will save a lot.
2. Leave the lamps on
Leaving a lamp on in a room that nobody is using is one of the most efficient ways of wasting money. In an average Polish household, lamps turned on in empty rooms can make up to 20% of the energy used!
Of course, constantly turning the lamps on and off may be a nuisance, but this is where the smart house systems come into play. Thanks to motion detection and smart controls, the system will be able to immediately turn on the lamp when the need to do so arises and will turn it off, when you leave the room.
3. Don't close the blinds when a cold wind is blowing
Even the best, extremely airtight windows will not offer the same degree of thermal insulation as a wall of a building does. A blowing winter wind can cause a lot of heat to escape. If you have external blinds installed in your windows you can limit the energy loss by closing them, when the cold wind starts blowing in the evenings.
GRENTON smart house system will close the blinds for you in the evening, when the temperature drops, decreasing the energy loss at the same time. However, not everyone likes when all of the blinds are closed. You can configure the Grenton System to close the blinds only in the rooms nobody is in. What's more, Grenton can constantly monitor the wind direction and close only the blinds on the side of the building that is most exposed to the wind.
4. Keep the unused rooms heated whole day
Keeping all the rooms warm whole day long can cause you to lose a lot of money, as there surely are rooms in your house that nobody is in. Why keep the living room warm in the middle of the night when nobody is there? By decreasing the average yearly temperature by 2-3 degrees will save you a lot of money. When you leave home for work you can decrease the temperature in your whole house.
By using a schedule, GRENTON smart system will be able to automatically control the temperature in individual rooms, decreasing the temperature in rooms that are empty at certain moments during the day. There is, however, nothing worse than coming back to a cold house from work! Of course, GRENTON will ensure your comfort and will turn on the heating before you get home, so that you are warm when you come in.
5. Never turn off the mechanical ventilation system
Mechanical ventilation system is a solution that will significantly improve the energy efficiency in your building. Especially, if a recuperator is a part of it. On the other hand, ventilation control system running constantly can use quite a lot of energy. When you are not at home, there is no need to maintain such an intensive air circulation in your rooms. Decreasing vent power when you are not at home or turning them off at certain times can bring in a lot of savings.
Grenton smart system is a great addition to a mechanical ventilation system. When you switch your smart system to the absent mode, the system will be able to automatically decrease the efficiency of the ventilation system or control it in intervals that is, turning it on periodically to ensure that there is air circulating through the rooms.
6. Keep the laptop and cell phone chargers connected
It may seem, that a phone charger left in a socket does not use a lot of energy. Remember, that you have a number of devices like that in your home. When you consider all of your devices that are in "stand by" mode and smartphone and laptop chargers and your coffee machine you will see, that they use up quite a lot of energy over the year. In order to save up money and stay green, you would have to disconnect all of your chargers and audio-video devices from the network. But who has the time?
Things are a lot simpler in buildings equipped with GRENTON smart systems. By singling out circuits that can be disconnected during your absence and controlling them via the building automation systems you will make sure those circuits are disconnected once you leave home. Remaining circuits, powering devices that should not be turned off (such as refrigerators), will remain on.
7. Do not run off your TV
How many times did you leave the TV on and go outside, into the garden for a long while? In an average Polish household, the TV remains on when not sued for up to 1.5h! On a yearly scale this means tens of kWh of wasted energy.
One of the GrentonSystem modules is a smart IR remote module that can turn off the TV for you whenever it notices, that there is no one there for a long period of time.
