Today i want to present you my blueprint that saved me at least 600 euro extra this year.
On gas / electricity.
So what does it do and how to save gas
The unchanged pre-sets are the value’s i use now where i saved money with.
So what it basically does is regulate the temperature inside, based on the outside temperature.
This automation does calculate the best temperature inside your house so you don’t have to consume much gas.
For us right now even with the new price increase of the gas it did save us a lot.
Normal u have a thermostat inside your livinroom and u set it to a value and thats it…
This automation keeps your house at the right level of heat during the winter period, without needed to turn off the thermostat, even when u not home.
It does set it back at night to a state that it can warm up faster when entering the morning state, or preventing getting to cold.
As most people put the thermostat back to lets say 17, but when its gonna be cold outside like less than 9 celcius, and you come back or let home assistant set the thermostat when u arrive to 20 its gonna take time to warm up and uses more energy. (depending on the age of your house and isolation)
I did test 2 years how to save, so if i leave my thermostat controlled by this automation i save more gas instead of letting homeassistant know where i am and pre heat my house.
Its a different story if u go away on vacation for atleast a week.
Hope you guys like it, my first blueprint here @ home assistant, and I’m glad to jump over after 10 years from HomeSeer to this amazing community.
Interesting, but not sure it is true.
Turning the heating off when you don’t need it saves more energy than keeping the house at a medium level. In addition, taking more time to heat back up does not consume more energy. It just consumes more time.
The outside temperature is also not relevant. If it is warm outside, you don’t need heating. And just because it is especially cold outside, does not mean you need less heating. The comfort zone is not linked to the outside temperature in winter. So whether it is 10 or -10°C, the inside comfort temperature will remain the same. If you artificially lower the inside temperature due to extreme cold outside, you are simply saying that you normally heat higher than necessary or that you are willing to be colder than you are happy with, just to safe gas.
So the most savings can be had when you turn your heating off completely (or as far down as tolerable) when you are not using a room and turning it to what you need when you do use a room.
And yes, I mean room. It is wasting energy if you e.g. have 2-3 rooms you are not using regularly but you keep them heated permanently.
Judt my two cents. That’s why I personally use scripts that I trigger manually that heat specific areas of need and turn off when I leave.
Well, i presume u are an expert?
I’m specialised in energy.
If you don’t believe that this script can save money, than don’t use it.
We tested this in many homes for more than 2 years, using Homeseer, so i ported this version to Home assistant, and its not finished, as there are more things to be calculated, what i could not port yet.
But this gives a look of the possibility’s what u can do with Home Assistant automations, for people who are trying to learn.
Turning off the thermostat when u go away is not always a OK thing to do, depending on what house you live and how cold it’s outside and more factors.
The outside temperature is a Huge factor for specific houses what are not isolated that well…
I want to post more information here, but i’m really busy.
No, my point is:
The script will save money because it will lower the temperature further than the inhabitant would usually do, if the outside temperature is lower.
So, if the owner would usually have a minimum of 20 °C because that is the coldest he would knowingly tolerate, the script will turn to 18 °C if the outside temp is lower than e.g. -5 °C. This does not mean that any process is optimized. It only means that the will of the user is overriden.
If I feel good at 20 °C, then this temperature should not be increased any higher just because it is “not much colder” outside. If I set it higher than I need because the energy consumption is not as big as it would be at icy temps, then that is me being wasteful and nothing else.
So adjusting inside based on outside optimizes energy consumption for sure. But that is because people are “not smart”. It is the same for morons who set their AC to 16 °C in summer because they think that they need to counteract the extreme outside by extreme inside. That is simply people being morons.
Secondly, if a house is poorly insulated, then keeping the heating running will not make anything more energy efficient. That is simply incorrect. Look at the laws and principles of thermodynamics.
A poorly insulated house will not expell less heat if it is constantly heated. All you do by permanently heating is permanently giving of the same amount of energy to the environment.
So say the energy loss was 1 kW per hour at 20 °C inside temp. Then you will loose 24 kW per day. If you now turn off the heating for 8 hours while you are at work, the temperature will slowly drop and the heat loss will decrease (the closer the inside temp to the outside temp the slower the exchange) and you will not be consuming energy for the actual heating process.
The amount of energy you have to put back in to re-heat will not change as the loss remains the same at 1 kW per hour.
Of course there are small impacts factors that make this calculation less straight forward (efficiencies etc.), but overall it has been proven by many studies, that constant heating does not save energy but in fact wastes energy.
Again, only way this would not be true if people think that they have to heat to 25 °C when they return instead of 20 °C because they do not understand how heating works.
Eliminate the uneducated user and constant heating is proven to be wasteful.
But I of course do appreciate you sharing as many people will also not handle their heating needs properly and this script will aid them in doing so.
P.S.: I also know people who needlessly heat to 23-24 °C in winter and at the same time complain when it is 25 °C in summer (inside). That’s just psychological and has nothing to do with physics
