Regardless of which way you choose to power your home (heating oil, electricity, solar panel, gas etc) the energy consumed to provide your home and get it to the preferred temperature, be that hot or cold, will most likely account for a large chunk of your household bills. A good way to keep these costs at bay is by making use of smart technology around the home, and for this particular issue, with a programmable/smart thermostat.
Smart thermostats help to raise and lower the temperature in the home according to what activities are going on at that specific time. For example, if you were going out for the day, the thermostat would adjust the temperature of the house, ensuring that less energy would be used while the house is unoccupied.
In these hard economic times, it is refreshing to see that there are a number of viable options out there when it comes to smart thermostats. One of the best around is a product called Nest.
The Nest was created by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers – both of Apple fame – and has aptly been dubbed as “the iPod of thermostats,” for obvious reasons. Recently released in Apple Stores in the U.S. they’re currently retailing at $249.95. The reason why Nest is causing quite a fuss is that after around one week of use, it learns your habits and then formulates a program that responds to the user’s energy requirements in the most efficient way it can. It also has the addition benefit of being controllable from a smartphone or web-browser, not matter where the user is located.
Although the Nest is viewed by most as the creme-de-la-creme of smart thermostats at this present moment, there are numerous options available that are also worthy of note. These include the Ecobee Smart Thermostat, Homewerks Radio Wireless Thermostat and the Honeywell Prestige 2.0 Comfort System.
Real Time Cities 