The rise in gas and electricity prices and how home automation could help you save money

Since July this year, several big energy provide companies including AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin have announced a hike in the prices of their electricity and gas prices.

AGL announced back in June that the price hike would be as much as $600 a year in some states and EnergyAustralia has announced electricity price rises of close to 20 per cent for residential and business customers in both South Australia and New South Wales from July 1. Meanwhile, Origin announced hikes of 16% in both NSW and South Australia.

EnergyAustralia blamed the impact of higher wholesale power prices following the closure of large coal-fired generators, increased demand for gas by liquefied natural gas projects in Queensland, and reliability issues with some big generators.

The price hike may be a huge concern to most households hence we would like to introduce home automation and how it can help households save on energy consumption.

Gone were the days when home automation only involved setting your VCR player to record your favourite tv show. Technology has advanced tremendously in the past decade.

What does home automation involve you may ask and how does it help save energy consumption?

Home automation is all about automating the ability to control items around the house—from window shades to pet feeders—with a simple push of a button (or a voice command) via your mobile device.

At first glance setting up your home with home automation may seem very costly and unnecessary but in reality activities, like setting up a lamp to turn on and off at your whim, are simple to set up and relatively inexpensive. Others, like advanced surveillance cameras, may require a more serious investment of time and money but yet not as difficult and costly as we may imagine.

Home automation helps households monitor and save energy consumption which directly translates to saving money.

For example, if all of your major appliances are integrated and linked via an automated system, the system will choose the best and most cost-effective time for each appliance to operate, rather than running all of them simultaneously, or in peak times.

Imagine leaving your home for vacation only to realise you forgot to switch off your central heating. With home automation you are able to send a command to switch off the heating in your house via your mobile device.

There’s various types of home automation devices that you can get ranging from a smart light bulb that allows you to switch on/off and dim it via your mobile device, security camera kits with sensors and power controllers which allows you to monitor your home via wireless camera and send  commands to switch off electrical devices when you’re not home and also smart electricity meter displays which shows you your energy usage in your home which would enable you to identify and switch off appliances that are using too much energy in your household .

                        

We stock a wide range of home automation products which you may directly browse here however if you’re interested in finding out more but do not know where to start do contact us and ask us more about turning your home or office into a smart home/office and start saving money.