Schneider Electric: Going for Gold in Home Energy Management
This year’s summer of sport is well underway, and soon some of the best athletes from around the world will push the boundaries of what’s possible after months and years of training.
But, did you know our homes are more like an athlete than you might think?
Any sport professional knows managing their own energy is essential to succeed, especially in long-distance or endurance sports. They must know how to manage their energy consumption, accelerating or decelerating when needed and adjusting to plays from their competition to make it to the finish line in first place.
But to get to this point, it takes months of training and hard work to get their bodies in shape. Athletes understand a holistic approach is needed when it comes to fitness and performance; sleep, breathing, nutrition and mental fitness are all equally as important to keeping the body in shape and energised to compete.
Additionally, an essential part of any training program is to track results. After each training sessions, athletes and their performance coaches will spend hours trawling through data and practice footage to review where the gains and losses were, where they are underperforming and where improvements can be made.
And all these practices can be similarly applied to our homes…
When it comes to energy, it is important to be using the right amount at the right time. For instance, it is far more efficient to run larger electrical loads like EV chargers during the nighttime when energy tariffs are cheaper than it is to run it during the day. Similarly, for homes with solar panels and battery storage, rather than drawing power from the grid at a cost during the evenings, homeowners could instead optimise their stored energy generated by solar throughout the day to effectively power their electrical devices for free.
For homeowners looking for real improvements when it comes to home energy management, there is no point at looking at devices and appliances in isolation, or only trying to change one singular part of the home. Just like an athlete, a holistic approach must be taken; electrical devices and appliances, heating, hot water and lighting all feed into the overall energy efficiency of the home. By only changing their heating habits, for instance, and ignoring everything else, only a fraction of the efficiency gains will be achieved.
So how can homeowners track their performance?
Just like an app or data from a performance coach, which would enable athletes to follow their progresses, Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) are the perfect way to do this for houses. Take Wiser for example!
With the Wiser system and the use of PowerTags, homeowners can easily integrate all their electrical appliances and devices into one place. Via the app, homeowners can easily track how many calories – or energy – the home is spending throughout the day, and the impact this has on the home’s health, AKA their energy bills. By using this data, homeowners can fully understand their energy demand and start to make improvements, adjusting their schedules to better optimise energy usage and reap the rewards. After all it is not about consuming calories like hell, this is about consuming wisely.
Just like any athlete knows, practice makes perfect. Nobody is going to perfectly optimise their home energy usage the first time around with no prior knowledge or experience. But the more time that homeowners invest in learning about better energy management, getting familiar with their energy consumption and how this is impacted by their habits, and with the support of the right tools, they can kick-start their journey to becoming a top performer. It is also important to remember that achieving energy efficiency is more of a marathon and not a sprint; even though it may take a little while to see significant savings on energy bills, the changes homeowners make will all be worthwhile in the long run.
To learn more about home energy management systems like Wiser, and how they could help you get the most from your tariff, visit our Energy Monitoring at Home page.
