How to Conserve Energy & Lower your Utility Bills Through Home Automation

Home automation can help you to conserve energy. In Singapore, the cost of utilities has increased on 1 July 2018: water by 30 per cent, and electricity by an average of 7 per cent.

Let’s find out how home automation saves energy- in more ways than one.

More Energy For Seniors

Home automation can help elderly folk at home conserve their energy. Parents of working adults today are often alone at home, watching reruns of soap operas endlessly. This sedentary lifestyle accelerates their muscle degeneration, which makes them increasingly incapable of manual housework. A slight turn at an awkward angle is all it takes for a chore to literally become back-breaking!

More Physical Comfort

Automation seeks to phase out manual labour. As such, homebound geriatrics gain more physical comfort from home automation. With less need to walk to and adjust window coverings in response to glaring sunlight or heavy rain, your elderly parents can focus their energy on finding out what happens to that vengeful ex-husband today after yesterday’s dramatic cliffhanger.

Furthermore, remote control of the automated shades is variable. Somfy remote controls come with customised settings and even allows you to adjust the angle of the slats on venetian blinds! If button-pressing is too strenuous for your parents, they can use voice control instead. The sheer satisfaction of barking commands at helpful technology while not moving an inch away from the television is one for the bucket list!

Greater Home Safety

The older you get, the more fragile your body becomes. Over time, elderly folk whose homes have little to no automation are at increasing risk of fatal injury. It would be a waste for their priceless wisdom to retire alongside their life due to frivolous fatalities—such as a twisted neck from abrupt head-turning to catch a gratifying slapping scene while in the midst of adjusting shades.

With automated window coverings, your hobbling parents or theirs can voice-control curtains or blinds from the comfort of their telly throne. Their eyes can stay glued to on-screen drama, and their bodies can stay free from harm.

Better Family Time

When you tend less to window coverings, you bend more effort to family bonding. An instance of adjusting blinds may not seem long, but when you combine all instances that happen in a year, the huge opportunity cost becomes apparent: assuming an instance lasts 20 seconds, and happens five times per day, the annual wastage is roughly 10 hours of bonding with blinds.

Instead of wasting time on fiddling with window accessories, decrepit senior citizens can better utilise their remaining life force on meaningful activities with family; such as discussing about the scheming villian who triumphs in the season finale.