Did you know that over half the energy bill in the average American household goes toward heating and cooling? Your thermostats is a powerful little device; giving you the ability to control the comfort of your entire home. But now in the peak of winter or during the dogs days of summer, keeping your home comfortable without breaking the bank can be a challenge.

Enter: the smart thermostat. You’ve probably heard about their growing popularity in homes all across the country, but you’re wondering are they really worth it? Here’s exactly how a smart thermostat could be saving you money.

What Do Smart Thermostats Work?

While a traditional thermostat allows you to control the temperature of your home via a tiny control panel on your wall, smart thermostats give you control of so much more than that.

Optimal Convenience

If you enjoy convenience, you’ll love having the ability to change your temperature settings from basically anywhere. Using your smartphone, computer, or even your voice (with devices like Amazon Echo or Alexa), you can change your settings from wherever you are to keep your home at your preferred comfort level only when you need it to be.

Long day at the office? Turn up your AC on the way home from work so it’s nice and cool when you step in the door. Forget to reset before bed? Adjust the heat without ever leaving the comfort of your covers at night.

Total Control 

What’s even better is you can actually schedule your smart thermostat to specific temperatures during the day when no one is home or when someone is about to arrive. Geofencing allows the thermostat to know when you or a family member is close to home, so it will adjust accordingly to your preferred setting, and you won’t have to do a thing.

You can also program the thermostat to automatically adjust to energy-saving temperatures, so you’re never wasting energy. And if you have an ENERGY STAR certified smart thermostat, it will even go into low-power standby mode when it’s been inactive for a set length of time.

Helpful Insight 

Ignorance is not always bliss, especially when it comes to your energy usage. Smart thermostats keep you in the know with equipment use and temperature data which you can track and manage before your bill arrives.

And with automatic, periodic software updates, you know your smart thermostat is always using the latest algorithms in energy-saving technology possible.

How Does That Save Me Money? 

Since the only real way to spend less is to heat and cool less, simply programming your thermostat correctly can save you a lot of money. But easier said than done in a busy household. The best part, aka the “smart” part, of a smart thermostat is knowing when to lower your usage so you don’t have to sacrifice your comfort. Instead, it does it when you don’t notice. It also never forgets, and it promises to never be lazy.

Research by ecobee boldly claims that their customers saved up to an impressive 23% on their heating and cooling costs with a smart thermostat. While another study by Nest showed that their customers saved 10-12% on average for heating costs and 15% on air conditioning costs. No matter what smart thermostat you choose, those savings really add up. You can calculate what these numbers will mean for your household here.

You can also check with your local service provider to see if they offer additional incentives for having a smart thermostat. In many cases, homeowners enjoy rebates or other benefits for having a smart thermostat brand that’s partnered with their local utility company. Who doesn’t love extra savings?

So Is It Worth It? 

While a smart thermostat can cost you around $250-$500 – depending on the model and level of sophistication – compared to $25-50 for a basic thermostat, the long-term savings and convenience are certainly worth the initial costs. In fact, based on ecobee’s reported savings, you can pay off the purchase of a new smart thermostat in less than a year.  Not to mention, each new iteration of this technology offers more intuitive, user-friendly, and cost-saving benefits.  Forget forgetting to adjust the thermostat when you leave the house or wasting time messing around with complicated control schedules and manual operations. It’s time for an upgrade. When you’re ready to start saving money with a smart thermostat in your home, contact Madsen, so our team of technicians specializing in installing the top digital brands on the market can help you today.