How Does Solar Energy Integrate With Smart Homes?

Smart homes are becoming more popular throughout the US. According to recent data, as many as 63.43 million households are currently using smart devices, and that number only stands to grow in the coming years.

Fortunately, there’s virtually no limit to how “smart,” or how efficient a home can be.

If you live in or are interested in designing a smart home, solar energy is an excellent addition.

By helping smart homes run cleaner and more efficiently, solar energy enhances their comfort and makes them more valuable. It can also help decrease your electric bills.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how solar energy integrates with other popular smart home features and what you need to know about this winning combination.

What is a Smart Home?

A smart home is a residential dwelling equipped with features like lights, speakers, and thermostats that a homeowner can control remotely with a phone or internet-connected device.

Many home devices facilitate comfort, connectivity, and control and can help make a home more efficient and eco-friendly.

Additionally, most smart home tech provides access to data insights that allow the homeowner to customize settings and preferences.

Examples of smart home technology include the following:

Smart Hubs like Alexa, Apple Home, or Google Nest

Smart home hubs control smart and IoT-connected devices, including smart sensors, lightbulbs, switches and outlets, thermostats, and doorbells.

Smart hubs are popular because they centralize the automation of your smart home, allowing you to facilitate and control features from a single location.

Smart hubs also integrate different networks, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, into a single app, making it easy to manage everything. Finally, smart hubs can operate automatically based on a schedule you’ve assigned.

For example, your smart hub can play wake-up music on the smart speakers in each room of your household, turn on your outdoor lights before you arrive home at night, and automatically arm your home’s security system when you go to bed.

SPAN intelligent solar command panels

SPAN is a smart hub that allows you to remotely manage individual circuit breakers and can control your battery’s stored energy if an outage occurs.

During an outage, the hub makes it possible to prioritize certain functions, such as your refrigerator, kitchen outlets, and kitchen lights, and organize other loads as “need to have,” “nice to have” or “non-essential,” so your stored power goes directly where you need it most.

In addition to allowing you more control over your home, SPAN’s non-essential load-shedding feature also allows your batteries to last up to 40% longer, which is an excellent perk for anyone with a solar battery backup system.

Here at Sandbar Solar, we are Certified SPAN Installers, so get in touch with us if you’re interested in getting one for your home: (831) 469-8888

Smart services

Examples of smart services include smart thermostats, smart lights, and smart speakers. These services generally integrate with a smart home hub or voice assistant and operate automatically based on your chosen presets.

Smart thermostats may integrate with an IoT-connected motion detector, for example, to raise your home’s temperature when people are awake and moving around and lower it at night when everyone is asleep.

Smart appliances

Examples of smart appliances include smart TVs, smart refrigerators, and even app-connected coffee makers.

These appliances can be controlled remotely via an app and are a great way to simplify household chores, get early notifications about potential problems, and simplify household chores.

While smart homes are popular for many reasons, they stand out for being efficient and eco-friendly. For example, smart thermostats can reduce a household’s annual heating costs by an estimated 10-12% and cooling costs by as much as 15%.

If you live in California, where utility bills are increasing annually, this is a major benefit.

Adding smart home devices may also increase your home’s value: 78% of people planning to buy a house report that they’d be willing to pay extra for a smart home.

How Does Solar Energy Complement Smart Homes?

The purpose of a smart home is to leverage technology to make the home as efficient, comfortable, and automated as possible.

You’ve got to have some way to power all that tech, though! That’s where solar energy comes in.

Here are a few benefits of adding solar power to your smart home:

• More control over your energy use. Solar energy dovetails perfectly with the goals and purposes of a smart home. By offering homeowners insight into energy usage and control over the energy they generate, solar energy reduces waste and promotes efficiency.
• Easy integrations with smart home technology. Sometimes, you can even enjoy integrations between your smart home devices and your residential solar system. Today, for example, dozens of apps allow you to monitor your residential solar system and track the efficacy of your panels. You can also install smart hubs that allow you to aggregate the monitoring and control of your home’s various energy systems into a single app, thereby providing more visibility, efficiency, and functionality.
• Tailored control over stored energy. If you want even more functionality, you have the option to add battery systems to your smart home. Battery systems allow you to store solar energy for the times when you need it, such as the times of day when energy prices are highest or during storms or emergency outages. Combining battery systems with smart home technology, like solar hubs like the SPAN system, allows you to allocate power to certain segments of your home and prioritize power utilization during peak pricing hours and other times.

Adding Solar Power can Make Your Smart Home Even More Efficient – Sandbar Solar can Help!

Smart homes are the way of the future.

Whether you’re already using smart home devices or are interested in outfitting your entire home with smart tech, adding solar power is a great way to make your space more functional, comfortable, and environmentally friendly.

Want to learn more about how adding solar energy can increase your home’s efficiency and functionality? Contact Sandbar Solar today for a free solar consultation!

We service homeowners and businesses across the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Coast.

FAQs

1. How do solar panels help power the smart home?

Solar panels power smart homes by generating energy from the sun and, if the home has a battery backup, storing any excess power. This creates a feedback loop where select smart appliances in the home always have power, which allows them to run as optimally, efficiently, and reliably as possible.

2. Are smart homes energy efficient?

Yes. Smart homes are highly efficient because they adjust to a household’s dynamic schedules and changing energy needs. Additionally, many smart home devices can detect and adjust for energy inefficiencies, thereby reducing energy consumption and minimizing waste.

3. What are the benefits of smart homes?

In addition to being eco-friendly and efficient, smart homes allow you to manage all your devices conveniently. They’re also worth more than homes without smart technology and can be more comfortable and enjoyable to live in than traditional homes.

Call us today and explore your options!