Smart Home Energy
One of the promises of new technology and automation for the
house is that there will be smart home energy savings. But smart
home energy will be kind of dumb longer than we think.
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For instance, solar companies are selling
homeowners rooftop photovoltaic panels with two promises.
First, it will decrease your power bill. And second, the
panels will increase your home value.
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Well, I'm no rock scientist (geologist), but your $35,000 to
$65,000 solar panels will not increase your home value by this
much in this terrible housing market any time soon. And when you
sell the house you will be selling the rooftop solar panels with
the house and having to payback the loan on those panels, while
presumably moving into a new home that doesn't have photovoltaic
and repeating the same process over again.
Even with one of those solar sharing plans where the company
comes out and puts solar panels on your rooftop and presumably
no to little cost to you, you're still on the hook for a contract
for years to come, unless you roll that over to the new homeowners
once you sell the house.
Now, let's talk about the technological reasons that smart home
energy devices will not save you a dime. It is simply because
of two factors including first, they are overpriced and second,
they don't work as advertised.
The overpriced part is pretty self-explanatory. Going green typically
costs more money (green) than having a large, black flatulating
carbon footprint does.
Okay, now for the second part of smart home energy devices not
working. In a Utopian world solar panels and wind turbines will
collect energy so that you can disconnect from the grid (but you
will still need an Internet connection to live a normal life).
The solar panels and wind turbines will either store this energy
in batteries, or sell off the over abundance of energy to the
electric companies or both. If connected to the electric companies
then your home will be part of the smart
grid and will automatically have conversations you know nothing
about with other homes, businesses and the power company itself.
If your house is not connected to the grid, then you have more
of a closed circuit and your appliances will talk to each other
in a form of anti-social appliance clique that you could never
join if you were still in high school.
The clique of washers, dryers, refrigerators, microwaves, home
entertainment centers, hot tubs, lighting, security systems, lawn
watering systems and more will all interact with each other. And
besides the power company they may also interact with your grocery
store, hardware store, favorite fast food restaurant and other
commercial enterprises.
But, what do you think this is, the Jetsons? No, its real life.
Your appliances won't communicate with one another or with any
entity outside of the home. For some partial communication with
businesses you'll be charged for it and it will be included inside
a nebulous part of your monthly bills that will mystify you momentarily
until you realize it is easier to pay the small fee than check
out the source.
Setting up your smart home energy saving plan will take a lot
of your time and energy not to mention the time and energy of
the people who make it, sell it, install it and tell you that
everything is working perfectly when it isn't. And all of this
will cost you more money than you imagined.
You thought naively you were going to save money, save time,
save home energy and your own energy, save the planet, clean the
oily birds, pet the whales, swim with the dolphins and hug a tree
just because you decided to use technology so that you wouldn't
have to get off your lazy butt and actually do some of this work
yourself.
The lure of green technology is that they sell you on saving
energy so that you don't have to make behavioral changes. If you
can't manage to flip a switch and turn off the lights, then buy
CFL bulbs which will save energy so that you don't have to make
a lifestyle change.
Like to leave the doors open in summer with the air conditioning
going or leave the refrigerator open and cool off the whole kitchen?
Then buy solar panels and wind turbines so that you can keep doing
what you're doing and have the technology save energy for you.
The problem with smart home energy is that the homeowner gets
to keep being a dumb as ever when it comes to making a change
in behavior. Just go out and buy a system that will save money
for you so you don't have to think about it.
Smart home energy savings are a bunch of bunk, so I'm calling
this one debunked right now. My mistake. Okay, wait for it - now.
Yes, now.
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