Is Home Automation Key to a Low Carbon Lifestyle?
Home automation systems (such as Colorado vNet and Control4) are becoming a necessary amenity in any high-end home, but are they also a new tool in our fight to reduce energy use and global warming? After all, these systems are designed so that you can control your high-end AV components, home security system, lighting and HVAC from one device (or via the web from somewhere else), so why not add energy conservation to the mix, right?
The idea is that these high tech systems will minimize or eliminate the wasted energy from lights left on by accident, vampire loads from home equipment in the “off” state, thermostats set too high or low for usage patterns or climate conditions, etc - the automation systems themselves will set things right even if you forget. We’ve certainly written about how important it is to kill of these wasteful elements, but are they big enough to warrant buying one of these systems just to reduce them?
Big buildings save energy by controlling which areas need to have heating or cooling, and not wasting energy on those spaces when they are not occupied. Similar features are sometimes found on high end homes (and are probably almost a necessity on the oversized starter castles spread across the outskirts of every city). But systems like that are hard to retrofit into smaller, older homes.
