Tech Tools for Energy Efficiency

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by Sense/David Butler

If you’re a homeowner headed toward off-grid living, you can begin your journey by examining your energy habits and those of your home. One of your first goals should be to make your dwelling more efficient so that your hard-earned renewable energy doesn’t go to waste. And if you’re grid-tied, making your home more energy-efficient will still help you save every possible cent. Common sense can probably assist you in pinpointing a few inefficiencies, but as our technology gets smarter, so can we, by gaining new ways to reduce waste and adjust our energy budgets. The following apps and gadgets will enable you to track and reduce your usage, as well as communicate with your energy and utility systems to help your home hum efficiently.

Energy Apps

Apps are available for almost every energy-related aspiration, from calculating your carbon footprint to adjusting your thermostat from afar. Many programs can help you assess your usage and power down energy hogs. You can also use apps to track and change your usage when they’re linked with whole-house systems (see “Whole-House Systems”). The following apps offer distinct services that will get you off to a good energy-saving start. To access other resources, see “Resources for Raising Your Energy Awareness.”

Energy Consumption Analyzer (Android)/Energy Cost Calculator (Apple). Measuring your energy use is a necessary step toward reducing it. These two free apps can calculate and graph your energy consumption rates over time. Energy Consumption Analyzer monitors overall energy usage via meter readings, and generates graphs of hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly consumption rates. You can add annotations, as well as color-code periods of high and low energy usage to gain a better understanding of your energy spending.

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