Here are 5 smart home devices that can save you hundreds of dollars a year

As electricity prices continue to rise, finding ways to streamline your energy usage is getting increasingly important. Thankfully, smart home technology can save you hundreds of dollars a year while significantly reducing how much pollution your home creates. 

Plus, more and more homeowners across the U.S. are realizing this energy-efficient innovation is within reach. All this tech can even be combined to give you full home energy control thanks to companies like Schneider Electric, which was recently ranked as the world’s most sustainable company. 

Smart home tech is great news for your wallet and the planet — especially considering more than 20% of all U.S. emissions are directly attributed to household consumption.

Here are our five favorite smart home solutions that’ll help you save money and live more sustainably.

1. Stay ahead of the game with a ‘smart’ electrical panel

Your electrical panel is where all the circuits in your home come together and receive their power — typically as a breaker box in your basement. Unlike an ordinary electrical panel, though, a smart electrical panel like the Schneider Pulse puts sophisticated programs in charge of those breakers, which increases energy efficiency and saves you money.

For example, it can track your energy usage in real time and even show you how much energy-specific areas in your home use (and how much you’re paying for that). It can also pair with EV chargers, solar panels, and backup batteries — and can be controlled remotely.

2. Turn the lights off with connected switches

Smart light switches and outlets are a quick and inexpensive way to streamline your home’s energy usage, with dimmers costing less than $50. When you use smart lighting, you can turn lights and appliances on or off right from your phone — and even connect them to home assistants like Alexa or set up automated schedules.

Bonus: If you’re going on vacation and forget to turn off the lights, you can do that remotely. 

3. But keep the lights on during power outages

Home battery systems are an increasingly popular remedy to provide backup in case the grid goes down. As Americans experience more frequent extreme weather events, having backup power is becoming increasingly important. And while backup systems aren’t cheap (they can cost at least $12,000), current tax breaks can reduce the cost by 30%.

The Schneider Boost allows you to store energy from a solar setup or straight from the grid to automatically power your home during an outage or even when electricity rates are high.

4. Optimize EV charging for the cheapest possible power

Switching to an EV will already save you around $1,500 a year on gas and maintenance, and pairing that with the right EV charger will slash your bills even more. 

That’s because systems like Schneider’s Charge can optimize when you’re fueling up your EV to avoid peak electricity rates. You can also analyze your charging habits and your energy consumption to make smarter decisions.

5. Manage your entire electrical setup straight from your phone

Most smart home tech comes as individual solutions, like a single EV charger or a few smart lightbulbs, and often these systems can’t “talk” to each other. Schneider fixed that problem by building out a single app that lets you control your entire home system. 

Think of it like your virtual energy headquarters, where you’ll get alerts if your backup battery has a low charge and gives you the option to switch off areas of your home that are currently using the most energy.

Live energy monitoring can help you streamline your usage, decrease your power bill, and lower your carbon footprint — because, remember, the cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use. Plus, you’ll get peace of mind by always knowing what’s going on with your home’s energy system.

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