How to Save (Even More) Energy With Alarm.com

Did you know a smart home can save you money on energy bills?

You probably did. Smart thermostats are big news, and come with some seriously smart ways to save energy without making you uncomfortable. Ours offers a ton of great savings to cut energy waste without impacting your family's comfort.

But did you know about the savings beyond the thermostat?

Heating and cooling accounts for about half of the average home's energy use. While a smart thermostat will put a sizable dent in that particular portion of your energy bill, a fully-integrated Smart Home powered by Alarm.com will save more.

We give you a range of tools and devices that help you understand your energy use, create and track energy-saving goals, and automate more of your home's appliances to save energy.

Here are the five steps of becoming a smarter energy saver with Alarm.com.

Step 1: Connect everything

Alarm.com lets you connect and control a range of everyday devices that consume energy in your home. Your ordinary lighting can be replaced with smart switches, while lamps can become intelligent by simply plugging them into a smart plug.

Smart plugs also give you control of entertainment devices like cable boxes and TVs, which consume a surprising amount of power even in standby mode when you're not using them.

Step 2: Get a baseline

The next step is to get a picture of what your energy use looks like.

Your Alarm.com app gives you several ways to see a complete picture of energy consumption across your entire home. With smart plugs installed on key devices, you can break energy use down by appliance to identify the biggest consumers of electricity. This gives you an idea of which devices to focus on.

You can also see energy use across different timeframes, ranging from 24 hour periods to a whole year and beyond, and in different units: kilowatt hours or even dollar amounts. This will help you set goals.

Add your zip code and you can even compare your home to others in the area.

Step 3: Set your goal

Once you understand what your everyday energy use looks like, you can plan your first round of energy savings using Alarm.com's goal-setting feature.

This slider shows you a projection of your expected monthly costs, based on how you already use energy. You can use it to set a monthly savings goal.

 Once you set your target, Alarm.com will track it against the reality of how much energy you're using, showing you in real time how much energy you need to save to hit your goal.

Step 4: Automate, schedule, save!

The great news is that Alarm.com takes the work out of saving energy.

First of all,the Alarm.com Smart Thermostat is a savings powerhouse. It's easy to create custom schedules, fine-tuned to save energy when you're not there but still have things comfortable when you are. It also has some very smart automated savings, like using your smartphone location to save when you leave the house, or setting back automatically when you leave an outside door open. It even knows the weather, and can set back slightly on the hottest days when keeping things cool is is most expensive. 

Then, there's everything else. With a smart plug, any device's power supply can be automated. You can schedule your lights to turn off at certain times of day. You can schedule the cable box in the basement to turn off completely during the week when you're not down there. Geo-Services can also turn things off based on your location.

You can also set energy-saving triggers so that devices only use power when you're actively using them. You can have your outside lights turn on only when you open the front door. Motion sensors around your home can trigger inside lighting to turn on for a set period of time when you enter a room, then turn off again ten minutes later.

The more you explore your Alarm.com system, the more ways you'll find to save.

Step 5: Optimize

You'll already be able to see the effect of your savings efforts, and whether you're on track to meet your monthly goal. If you're there already – well done! If you're a few percent short, you'll want to rethink your goal or identify some new ways to save.

Be sure to sign up for weekly or even daily energy summaries, which Alarm.com emails to you. And be warned – like using an exercise tracker, saving energy with Alarm.com can be addictive – especially when you see your lower bill at the end of the month.

To find out more about saving energy with Alarm.com, click here.