Saving Costs through Energy ?!

Not really a new query but a consideration for users new to home automation is the mis-guided selling point that running costs will be reduced through energy savings. Personally this is not adding up over the last five years for me.

We all get addicted to adding active devices to our HA networks which are reported to use <0.7w (or thereabouts) each, constantly. Add this to the cost of the annual cost of batteries and upcoming recurring revenue charges for promised support of devices which were released years ago and things look strictly more hobbyist than economist.

These costs are not mitigated by any amount of creative programming.

For anyone new to home automation, your new project ain't gonna save you money.

[jay (support)]

Afraid I'm going to disagree with you here. While I haven't done exhaustive financial analysis (battery cost) I can say that several years ago I did do a pretty complete study of my electrical usage (my house is all electric) and by making my thermostats smarter and my lighting smarter (lower ON brightnesses, auto offs when appropriate, etc) I saved a reasonable amount (~8-13%), both during coldest and warmest times of the year. Many of those devices are still in use, so amortizing them over a 6 year period reduces overall cost. LED bulbs will, of course, change the calculus on lighting as well, though they are still quite pricey. Over the long term though they will negate that.

Using a cost that has yet to be revealed as part of your argument (subscription) is somewhat questionable, particularly when it's not required.

I will, however, give you that smarthome devices are currently more about convenience than economy, and are likely to stay that way for a while at best.

Certainly for me automation has saved me a small fortune in electricity and gas, mostly because we in this house forget to turn off the lights so having triggers to turn them on and off helps quite dramatically. Also the recent addition of Stella z radiator TRVs (thanks @petemathison ) in almost every room has resulted in about a 30% drop in heating costs year on year. So it does. But as Jay said it is primarily about convince.. And it is SO convenient


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And I'd like to add that when we went through a pretty sever drought here a couple of years ago, the EZFlora was a lot more flexible than any of the other sprinkler controllers available at the time both in keeping up with the watering restriction rules (many of which got so complicated that I believe the real reason they put in place was to make as many people as possible say "the heck with this, let the lawn die'), and adjusting the watering rate to follow the weather. Not that the water bill was more than a blip on the radar relative to the electric savings gained by tweaking the AC thermostat setbacks in the same script, but there's something to be said for doing my part to keep the wells from going dry. And while I know that now there are web enabled, weather aware sprinkler controllers everywhere out there, there's a lot of convenience in keeping all the controls and displays in one spot rather than having to open half a dozen different Apps to visualize or change the state of the house; I continue to be bummed that I can't at least watch the Kevo lock states and SiteSage power draws in Indigo, even though the Kevo Plus and Sitesage gateways are happily sending their data out into the cloud before I can get it back through their Apps.

I am saving money with Indigo ... I have a pool filter pump and a pool heater (heat pump) and Indigo monitors the output of my Solar Panels (using Owl Intuition Plug-In), and turns on these devices when I have excess energy (monitored in 15 minute blocks). If I have a day with no excess energy (ie: raining), Indigo will force the pool pump to turn on the next day (if also raining or overcast).
If you have a pool, you should be able to save money using Indigo ... the payback period will depend on many factors (size of pool pump, pool heater, how much you spent on Z-Wave hardware, etc).

NOTE: I don't use Indigo for the money saving benefits ... I consider this stuff my hobby, it is fun to tinker with!

Not really a new query but a consideration for users new to home automation is the mis-guided selling point that running costs will be reduced through energy savings. Personally this is not adding up over the last five years for me.

I think that completely depends upon your perspective... and what you are replacing. Sure, going to an Indigo controlled thermostat from a 7-day programmable isn't going to save you much if you assume your original programming wasn't all that far off. But coming from my in-law's old rotary dial thing (I'm sure there is a technical name for it), they could save a bunch of money. Same, presumably, would go for other heating related, solar related, etc. technologies that others have posted about.

I agree that light switches and such won't save a TON of money for an average house. Some may lose money in terms of economy.

Then again, there is the time I saved several hundred dollars with my Indigo connected sprinkler system... The season that I finally worked hard to get all zones completely connected, multiple watering schedules and some great conditions in place (and that takes a while), it proceeded to rain for approximately 400 of the 365 days of the year. I never turned my sprinkler system on one time all of 2015. Whatever works, I guess.

The only thing I can really measure is gas (heating/hot water) usage. Since moving to Indigo this has saved ~£120/year. It is probably a bit more as I do not have the data to adjust for changes to gas pricing.

Electricity is a lot trickier, as the range of consuming devices has not remained static over the last few years. Wall plugin, or in wall wire in, devices will consume some energy. However, I have put one or two of those between the output and a bunch of electronics (TV, etc) that also cause a drain (keeping those LEDs alight, being ready to respond to remotes). Thus I have cut down 4-5 draining points to 1.

Sam.

[quote=“RogueProeliator”]it proceeded to rain for approximately 400 of the 365 days of the year.[/quote]

I didn’t know you lived in Scotland.