7 smart home devices that will help you save on your utility bills

In addition to providing convenience, the best smart home devices can save you a lot of money in the long run. This can either come through lower utility bills or by helping to warn of an impending disaster.

Here are five types of smart home devices that can help lower your electricity, gas and water bills.

Smart thermostats

Ecobee Premium Smart Thermostat — (Photo: Ecobee)

After lighting, heating and cooling costs make up the largest portion of your monthly utility bill. However, the latest smart thermostats and smart air conditioners can help you save money here too. For starters, you can often get a smart thermostat for free or very inexpensively from your local utility company, which offers sales and significant discounts on devices, some of which cost as much as $250.

The best smart thermostats, like the Nest Learning Thermostat and Ecobee SmartThermostat Premium, have features that can learn your habits and automatically adjust your heating and cooling. This is because they have sensors that detect when you are home and when you are away, so you don’t use electricity or gas when you are away from home. They can also connect to your phone and use geolocation to ensure your home is at a comfortable temperature as soon as you arrive home. Ecobee can also connect with your local utility to determine when energy costs are lower and optimize your heating and cooling during those periods, so you spend less.

Smart air conditioners

(Photo: Midea)

If you don’t have central air, you’ll likely have to rely on a window air conditioner to keep your home cool in the summer. Smart air conditioners aren’t as smart as thermostats, but they have some features that can help you save money. First, many newer models use inverter technology rather than compressor technology to cool the air. By their nature, inverters use much less energy than compressors, so you immediately save money because they are more efficient. Smart air conditioners can also be connected to other smart home devices and services so that they only turn on when you want them to. For example, you can create a smart home routine that turns on the air conditioner when you come home and turns it off when you leave.

Smart lights and smart light switches

Smart bulb controlled by your phone

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Across the United States, incandescent bulbs are being largely phased out in favor of LED lamps, which use much less energy. How much? A typical LED bulb uses about 9 watts of energy, compared to 60 watts for an old incandescent bulb.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume you turn the lights on for 6 hours a day. This means 2,190 hours in a year. For a 60-watt incandescent bulb, this means 131.4 kilowatt-hours compared to 19.7 kWh for an LED bulb.

Based on March 2024 U.S. average electricity rate (0.174 kWh) from: Bureau of Labor Statistics, running an LED bulb will cost $3.43 per year compared to $22.86 for an incandescent bulb. Now think about how many light bulbs you have in your home and the costs add up quickly.

Smart LED bulbs are more expensive up front, but they can help you save even more money in the long run. For starters, if you forget to turn off the lights when you leave the house, you can either turn them off remotely using your phone or connect them to another smart home device that will do it for you. Additionally, you can use a motion sensor or set a schedule to turn them on and off when you’re not using them.

Smart light switch

Alternatively, a smart light switch can be even more economical than purchasing a large number of smart LED bulbs for rooms with lots of overhead lighting. Installing them requires some knowledge as you will need to replace the traditional light switch. This is relatively easy to do – although you will need to know if you have a neutral wire in your home.

Smart plugs

Wemo WiFi Smart Plug Review

(Photo: Wemo)

Smart plugs can also be used to turn devices on and off on a schedule or when you’re at home or away. These are useful if, for example, you have a table or floor lamp or a fan that you want to turn on when the room temperature gets too high. Even better: smart plugs are cheap. Some of the best smart plugs cost as little as $20 each, so adding them to your home is a relatively small investment.

Smart blinds

You won’t have to cool your home as much if it doesn’t get too hot, and something as small as smart blinds can help. They can be raised or lowered automatically depending on the time of day, or, if you connect them to a smart home device with a built-in temperature sensor – like the Echo Dot – they can lower themselves if the room gets too hot.

Traditionally, smart blinds from companies like Lutron and others have been quite expensive because they had to be custom-made to fit your windows. However, IKEA recently got into the game and offers pre-measured blinds for less than $200. It’s true that it’s a lot more expensive than non-smart blinds – and the color options are limited – but it’s more reasonable than before.

Water leak detectors

D-Link water leak detector

(Photo: D-Link)

There’s nothing as bad as coming home from vacation to find your basement flooded due to a burst water heater or pipe. In addition to the mess, it can cost thousands of dollars to repair everything and make sure there is no mold. Smart water leak detectors can notify you if something catastrophic has happened, and some models can even automatically shut off your home’s water supply, preventing a big leak from turning into a huge one.

Even if it’s not as dramatic as a burst pipe, some of the smarter smart water leak detectors can also alert you to potential situations (like freezing temperatures) and find smaller sources of water waste (like a running toilet) and alert you to the problem. before it lasts too long.

Most smart water leak detectors cost around $40-60 each – and are worth placing in any place where a leak may occur – but if you want something that will also shut off the water flow to your home, it will cost around $400, and not including the price of the plumber who will have to install it. Still, this upfront cost can save you a lot of money in the long run.