Energy costs are up, and the best way to lower your bill is to lower how much you use. There are multiple ways to go about that, and the right tech can help.
Thermal Imaging Camera
Find the air leaks through your home using your phone
Heating and cooling are the two most energy-intensive things we do in our homes. We want heat to stay inside during winter and cool air to stay inside during summer. If that air leaks out, our heaters and air conditioners have to work harder to make up the difference.
You can detect leaks by walking around the house and placing your hand near noticeable gaps to feel for air coming through. But this is neither the most efficient nor the most effective method. Instead, you can use a thermal imaging camera to detect temperature differences. These days, you can get a camera that plugs into your phone, allowing you to see the information on your large, high-resolution display. I have the Rision Magic Pro, which requires virtually no setup beyond plugging the camera into my phone, downloading the app, and grantinga few permissions.
Instant hot water dispenser
Waste less water and possibly use less energy
Most of us know that central air and electric heaters are huge energy guzzlers. Not everyone knows that water heaters tend to follow behind as the next most energy-intensive thing in our home. Producing hot water is demanding, whether that’s boiling water on a stove or turning on an electric kettle.
I‘ve become enamored with instant hot water dispensers. A countertop hot water dispenser like the Waterdrop M6CG plugs into a regular wall outlet. Instead of boiling water like an electric kettle, it heats water instantly as it comes out and only runs for the short time it takes to fill a mug. Like an induction cooktop compared to an electric one, it saves energy by getting the job done faster.
A built-in hot water dispenser like the Waterdrop K6 uses more power because it has its own tank that it needs to keep heated — but it has reduced my water usage by saving me from running my kitchen tap long enough to heat up. This also reduces how hard my electric water heater needs to work.
A portable power station with solar panels
Free energy that you can produce yourself
The fastest way to recharge a portable power station is to plug it into a wall, but almost all also offer the option to charge it with portable solar power. Many companies will even bundle the two together, saving you the research.
Portable power stations save you money by reducing or eliminating your need to buy gas for a generator during a power outage. For people on time-of-use utility plans, these batteries can power electronics when energy costs are high and recharge when energy costs are low. Their capacity is now large enough to offload the charging of any number of portable electronics. A portable power station like the Anker SOLIX C1000 Gen 2 that you charge for a couple of hours on the weekend can then be used to charge your phone, laptop, and gaming handhelds throughout the week.
SwitchBot Floor Circulator Fan
A fan that can cool you off wherever you are and better circulate the air in your home
Credit: Bertel King / How-To Geek
I was fortunate enough to be able to design the home that I live in, and we intentionally placed ceiling fans in all the main living areas. These ceiling fans are not only an alternative to cranking up the central air, but they are a supplement that reduces how long our HVAC needs to run. They use so little power; by moving heat or air where it’s needed, they save far more energy than leaving the HVAC to do that work alone.
If you have ceiling fans, use them, but even in our home, we don’t have a ceiling fan in every place that could benefit from airflow. This is why I’ve become quite enamored with battery-powered fans like SwitchBot’s Floor Circulator Fan, which doesn’t require an app despite being a SwitchBot product. It can run from wall power like any other fan, but it can also run on a battery for many hours at a time without using any wall power. It’s efficient enough that you could add it to a list of devices charged exclusively with a portable power station.
Spend money to save money
The list above contains hundreds of dollars worth of tech, and these devices won’t save you anywhere near that much money over the course of a year. It cost my wife and me tens of thousands of dollars to eliminate our home electric bill by blanketing our roof with solar panels. Tech purchases don’t save you money all at once, but they can change your thinking and lead to savings that add up in the long run.