Innovative and eco-friendly devices to help you live a greener life
It’s never been easier to plug in and start saving money on your energy bills with smart home living. Home owners and renters alike are adopting smart devices at home, in fact over 5 million Aussies currently have smart speakers at home.
Being an Entech, we’re all about helping our customers be a bit greener and smarter with their energy choices. So, we searched high and low to find 5 devices you can install easily today to enjoy smart home living tomorrow.
Why is smart home living important?
Not only are smart homes more comfortable, convenient and safe places to live, there is also an increasing demand for them in Australia. Apart from saving money on bills, having a smart home actually increases the value of your property. In some cases, this can be by up to 5% of your property value. That’s $50,000 on a 1mil property!
Without further ado let’s start with the simplest gadgets to get you started on your smart home living journey.
Gadgets for smart home living
5. Smart energy-efficient LED bulbs
If you’ve followed our ongoing advice to install LED bulbs in your property, you’ve no doubt started saving money on your energy bills. Enter smart LED bulbs.
Smart LED bulbs can be automated to switch off and on at sunrise & sunset, switch on at certain times of the evening to make it look like someone’s home, and be switched off remotely if you forgot to do so as you were running out of the house.
We like The Samsung SmartThings Smart Bulb, which is a part of the Samsung SmartThings series, all of which can connect together with a hub like an Alexa or Google Home.
4. Smart window technology
Installing smart glass can save up to 40% in heating and cooling costs. This is due to the smart glass switching from clear (transparent) to frosted (opaque) based on temperature or at the click of a button. Imagine, being in the office and feeling the outside temperature heat up and knowing you can keep your house cool by switching your home windows to frosting, through a mobile app.
Some smart glass, like the photochromic window, don’t need to be switched on and adjust automatically depending on the level of light outside.
3. Wattwatchers
Access real-time granular level data about your household’s electricity usage with a Wattwatchers smart energy management technology package. You might get a surprise about which appliances use the most energy in your house.
We’re giving away 50 systems to Nectr customers at the moment, each valued at $1000 including installation by an electrician. It’s our way of helping you be cleverer about the way in which you save energy.
2. Wifi smart plug
You can use smart plugs in normal wall sockets and connect to Wifi. This means you can control all your normal devices through an app on your phone, such as turning on your lights or aircon on before you get home, or turning on your slow cooker to ensure you get home to a freshly cooked meal.
You can program them to turn all appliances off at a set time, making sure you’re not wasting energy on appliances that are on stand-by whilst you’re asleep. Stand-by costs of a washing machine alone, for example, can add close to $15 on your annual energy bill. We love the Samsung SmartThings Wifi Smart Plug, use as many as you need to make your house perfectly automated for you.
1. Smart home living hubs
No smart home living device list is complete without a hub at the centre of it. Alexa and Google Home are both excellent voice assistants that can control your smart home.
Depending on what you envisage your smart home living to be, Alexa could be the answer if you’re looking to extend your smart home living and connect more devices. However, if you’re after something easier to use the Google Home is the hub for you. With a price difference of only around $30 the choice is yours.
We hope this list has inspired the beginnings of your smart home living. If you’ve got some amazing devices which we haven’t listed, we’d love to hear about them. Share them with us through Facebook or Instagram.
