I'll start by saying I'm neither a spend thrift nor an eco warrior. However with energy prices at ridiculous levels, it's time for me to make a few changes and try to cut down on electricity wastage at home.
I'm interested to know what other HE users have already implemented to save electricity and what they plan to do (if anything) going forward. Hubitat and its rule engines create so many possibilities that I'm constantly looking to create solutions to problems around the home that don't exist (just because I love tinkering and learning). However, energy wastage appears to be a real problem that HE can help with.
I'll start with a couple of things that I've done as an example, one has been set up for some time, the other I was tinkering with just yesterday.
Garden Lighting (about 70 Watts).
When I first set up HE I added my garden lights and initially just had them on a time schedule. Only my wife and I in the house can see those lights and I realised it was wasteful to have the lights operated solely in that manner. There's little point in them being on if we're not there/can't see them. With RM I now have the lights set up so that they work on illuminance. However they switch off automatically if the alarm is part set (we go to bed), the alarm is full set (we're away) or the Living Room curtain is closed (we don't have x ray vision). Conveniently as soon as we switch off the alarm, or open the curtain beyond 50% the lights come back on again (assuming it's dark)
Sonos Amps (about 40 Watts Total)
I was interested to find out what specific devices actually use in standby use, so had a run around the house with an extension lead connected into a power monitoring outlet. We're always told that the TV on standby is a consumer so I checked that first - 2 measly Watts is hardly going to drag down the National Grid so I'll leave that for now. I've had Sonos since it's infancy around 16 years ago and still have the original ZP100 Zone Players. These are using about 8 Watts each while silent. That seemed a waste as I don't listen to music all the time. My Sonos Amps aren't dotted around each room - I have them in groups in central cupboards (closets). I've managed to group 5 of them back to a single outlet and added a Fibaro Z Wave Outlet there. With RM, those 5 Sonos Amps turn off as soon as the alarm part or full sets. I also added that outlet to my dashboards so that I can manually turn them off when unneeded.
I've an Aeotec Z Wave Energy Monitor arriving today so that I can add usage figures to my dashboards and see where additional automations might save energy.
I think my biggest thing has been turning off items based on occupancy.
Ceiling Fans:
No ceiling fan needs to be turned on if no one is in the room. I'm pretty loose on this but, we have a guest room and my kids live with their mom. So, if none of the rooms have lights changed in >12 hours, I make sure the fan turns off.
Bathroom Exhaust Fans
100% based on occupancy. They're all set to turn off 5 minutes after motion stops.
Tucked Away Lights
All closet lights are controlled by contact sensors. Pantry is on a motion sensor with a 1 minute timeout. These are the ones at highest risk of being left on for hours/days/weeks without anyone noticing. Garage lights are on motion sensors too (used more as a project space than for parking).
Space Heater
Have a space heater in the master bath that my wife likes to use first thing in the morning during the winter. Have a rule to make sure it gets turned off (more than one occasion of it running most of the day).
Honestly though...almost all of this is a drop in the bucket relatively speaking and in some cases the cost of the devices used to save energy cost more than what is being saved.
The major updates that I have done:
Change all my thermostats to Sinopé and have them reset to a low setting at a reoccurring interval. Those baseboard heaters are quite the energy hogs.
Heating and cooling with a central mini-split and keep the house relatively cool in the winter and relatively warm in the summer. In the summer, the temperature will vary depending on occupancy and humidity. (It is amazing how quickly (a few weeks) the body will adapt to temperature changes. Warm sweaters and blankets can also help.). Keeping the air filters clean makes a huge difference. Had neglected to clean mine for too long, and when I did, the temp went up by several degrees!
In the summer, Hubitat sends notifications to open or close windows depending on temperature so the house stays as cool as possible without needing to turn on the AC. One day, I’ll find an automated window motor that works for my purpose…
Ceiling fan in our bedroom is set to turn on at varying speeds dependent on temperature and humidity level in the room. Avoids having it turned on for the whole night when not required.
Warnings are sent via TTS if windows are open when the AC is heating or cooling. LEDs on Inovelli switches also show when AC is on in the summer.
Lights auto-turn off a short time after room is no longer detecting motion. The length of time depends on the room size and ability for the sensors to properly detect motion. That one likely only provides a small saving…
Installed a Aotech Power Monitor - provides some data, but found it to have limited value.
Separate from Hubitat, but:
Changed my water heater to a Heat Pump model - huge saving
Added blown-in insulation in the attic to bring it up to R-60 (from ~R-30)
Added Solar Panels
Sealed all outlets
Sealed and insulated headers in the basement
Setup a couple of Emporia Energy Power Monitoring devices to see where my energy is being directed. It has a nice interface, but you are locked-in and it is not easily compatible with Hubitat that I know - IoWatt would be a better solution for Hub Compatibility…
Like many people, I've got most of my devices tied to room occupancy in various forms. My most recent is that I've got motion sensors aimed uniquely at my and my wife's home office chairs (both under the desk, pointed directly at our chairs, with the side towards the door blocked); once both of us are sitting down and working, pretty much the rest of the house shuts down as we'll then be using pretty much just that one room until the evening.
One of the more esoteric set-ups I've done is some thermostat adjustments based on expected weather. If the forecast calls for the high the next day to reach above 90° F, I have the A/C kick on extra early and extra cold. Then I have the 'normal' house temperature set a little higher than normal throughout the day. The house will heat up throughout the day, but starting it unusually cold means that it takes longer for the A/C to kick in while the sun is beating down. If I have it timed right, I don't have to run the A/C between sunrise and sunset.
I have a similar set-up in the reverse for winter. If it's expected to drop below 0° F overnight, I have the heat crank up in the late afternoon and I don't have to run it as much when it's the coldest outside.
Theoretically, these will put less stress on my HVAC system (since it's not working as hard against the more extreme temperatures) and shifts the draw from the power grid to off-peak hours. I've only had those rules kick in a handful of times since I set them up, so I'm sure I could refine the specific start/stop times and thermostat temps to the most optimal settings, but it has worked so far.
I've had mine for a couple weeks and it's been working great. I'm reading every 5 seconds. As I recall, you have to modify the driver's variables from 'string' to 'number' if you want to do any rules. I'm not doing any rules with it yet though.
We have Hydro time of use use here, Off, Mid and On Peak. When the dishwasher door closes there is an announcement that you will be notified when Off peak hydro begins so you can start the dishwasher. Also when the wash cycle is done another announcement so you can open the washer door to let the internal heat dry the dishes
Our crawl space is often damp and I run a dehumidifier, Habitat makes sure the dehumidifier runs only during off peak times.
I had the usual hassle setting it up with the Z Stick to avoid S0 security. I also struggled to find a driver but used a community one modified for someone by Aeotec support to work for UK single phase. It seems to be working fine providing regular Wattage and accumulated Kw/h readings. I've added the Energy Calculator Plus app by @FriedCheese2006 to try that out. Otherwise I was just going to use RM to reset the energy at 00:01 and have a variable regularly update the current cost (Standing Charge + (Rate x KW/h))
We don't currently have peak/off peak rates which is a shame. With the Home Connect integration I could've set a rule for it to remote start, after the off peak time commenced, if we triggered a virtual switch to signify that the dishwasher was loaded.
Very true. We're in the UK so our systems are heat only. We are used to having our heating set to 22/23 degrees C. It usually doesn't fire up from late spring through to September. This year because the cost of gas is so high, we've lowered the set point and are not uncomfortable most of the time if it's set at 18 degrees C. That's kept the cost down (though still higher than previous years due to the rate)
We have a Honeywell EvoHome system with each rooms radiator being a separate zone. That allows us to only warm rooms that are occupied. There's a cobbled together community app/driver for it that needs a lot of work, as it's not geared toward Heat only systems and thermostat capability/commands don't work correctly. I have however managed to set up some rules so that if a door/window opens and stays for X seconds, it turns off the heating in that room until closed again to avoid wasting heat.
Lights are a difficult one. We've set up motion lighting but to be honest it's not great. Sometimes we're just passing through a room on the way to another and the lights aren't needed. Due to a bit of lag we can be half way across that room before the light comes on.
I’ve seen this with Z-Wave sensors. It’s typically better with Zigbee. The placement of the sensors will also make a difference. In one case where the light was taking too long to turn on, I moved the sensor outside of the room to turn the light on, and it works quite well!
Have you noticed a difference in energy cost? Our upstairs is typically in the 18C range as well in the winter - a very good temperature for sleeping.
Most of my sensors are virtual devices mirroring PIR's in my alarm system using MQTT and node red. It's difficult to accurately measure the timings between the physical PIR triggering and the virtual one responding (activity LEDs are disabled on my alarm system PIRs which doesn't help), but watching the virtual device on the dashboard it appears to be almost instant. My gut feeling is the lag is in the Z Wave module (Fibaro Dimmer 2) switching the LED load (and the lag of the LED load itself). I too use a PIR in an adjacent room to speed things up. Typically our Dining Room is never used and if we're in it we're walking to/from the Kitchen, so we use that Dining PIR to trigger the Kitchen lights.
When I started out with Hubitat I wanted to keep everything Z Wave OR Zigbee. I didn't want smart bulbs at all - I wanted to ensure that if the plug is pulled on the Hubitat, everything still works at the switch and the Dimmer 2's work normally without the Hub communication. I could've done similar with Zigbee and may have been a little more responsive, but I'm reluctant as it works on 2.4GHz. I know many say it's just a case of careful channel selection to avoid interference, but in reality if you live in a semi detached house in a highly populated area there is little chance of avoiding channel overlap. I use Unifi AP's in the house and I'm using channels 1, 6 and 11 for those with 20MHz bandwidth, while I can see my neighbour the other side of the party wall has his router set to occupy the entire spectrum.
I just took a quick look at usage using October & November 2021 versus this year:
2021 - 2,250 KW/h @ 2.53p per KW/h = £56.92
2022 - 640 KW/h @ 10.20p per KW/h = £65.28
Gas price has risen over 400 % and had we used the same, that £65.28 bill would have been £229.50.
The calculations above have shocked me, specifically the difference in rate.
