Apple enables smart home apps to cut your electricity bills

A new Apple framework makes it easy for developers of smart home apps to help cut your electricity bills. While EnergyKit is currently limited to thermostats and EV chargers, it’s the first step toward optimizing energy usage throughout your entire home.

Some smart home devices can already help you reduce power usage and costs, like the Ecobee and Nest thermostats, but EnergyKit takes this much further …

There are currently three main ways you can use smart home devices to save money.

First, you can use energy monitor plugs to see just how much power different devices are using, in order to figure out which ones might benefit from an upgrade. If you can see that your ancient washing-machine is using way more power than efficient modern ones, for example, you can work out the payback time for a new one.

Second, you can automate things like heating and cooling in cost-effective ways, such as only activating when someone is on their way home, and switching off when the last person leaves.

Third, you can use smart devices which are able to detect when your electricity supplier is offering cheaper rates, and shift usage to the cheapest times. What EnergyKit will do is let developers add this capability to their smart home apps, as The Verge explains.

Using this, your EV’s app could spot that your energy company has switched to off-peak power and activate your car’s charger. Similarly, a smart app controlling your AC system could dial back the cooling a little when electricity costs are high, and boost it when rates fall.

Given a little more time, your entire home could make constant adjustments to cut your power bills.

Photo by Zaptec on Unsplash