Europe lives today the first day with the new electricity tariff regulated by time bands< /strong>, w which can result in an increase in the amount of our invoices by up to 41% during peak hours. Controversy aside, more than one will have thought of looking for ways to save energy.
Can we do something with the iPhone and its range of accessories? Of course, and I’m not talking about recharging the phone at certain times (consumption is laughable). Let’s use this great ally that is HomeKit and take a look at what we can do in a few minutes so that we can minimize our electricity consumption and save money.
Use reminders so more expensive schedules don’t catch you off guard
Something simple that we can do before anything else is establish entry and / or exit notices for the most expensive time slots waste energy. The Reminders app is perfect for this, and more if, for example, you’re working from home:
In this example, I have used two reminders to notify the start of the most expensive sections by mentioning the end in its own name, although you can also choose to make two more reminders to notify you when the average cost hours start.
Of course, reminders should be repeated every working day of the week (On weekends and holidays, the rate is always the cheapest). We will achieve this by choosing the custom weekly repetition in which we can mark which days of the week we want the reminder to be activated:
You will be able to react by switching off certain other high-power household appliances that you can do without as soon as you receive these notifications. We may also, for example, cancel these notices and choose to receive notifications when low cost hours start and thus be able to better plan something like laundry.
Smart plugs are your best friends
If you have HomeKit compatible smart sockets
In the bottom bar of the iPhone Home app, you have the ‘Automation’ section, with which you can establish that, for example, the heating turns on early in the morning and turns off before 8 in the morning so that the water in the shower warms up outside the most expensive sections:
In this example, I took advantage of the fact that the TV is also connected to a smart outlet and added it to turn off early in the morning:
Another trick that we can do thanks to the automatisms (and if we live alone), is turn off all devices when we leave the house
Check the consumption of each smart plug separately
Smart plugs like Eve Energy have their own Eve app, from where we can check the consumption of each device and thus easily guess who is to blame for the latest upheaval in the form of melting current accounts.
Stay informed of electricity prices with these apps and web pages
The price of electricity varies with production and demand, and this is something that we can monitor with apps like redOS which you can download for free on your iPhone. Another alternative is Price Luz España, which we reviewed last year in Applesfera and which is also compatible with macOS.
Finally, you can place a shortcut to web pages like ESIOS where you can see the current price of the light in the Spanish territories on the iOS home page:
You have the option to add the web as an iOS icon in the Safari “Share” button:
These are all small functions, but they will help you keep control an electricity bill which, in Europe, will now tend to increase further. Remember that energy savings will become increasingly important, both for our wallet and for the planet.
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