Smart Technologies and Software to Monitor Use and Adopt Power Saving Measures

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Environmentally conscious users can choose from a wide array of energy saving applications and software. These applications help reduce power consumption by 20 to 30 percent and reduce your carbon footprint. About 5 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions worldwide are attributed to computers and computing technologies. Energy saving software is inexpensive or free to download and use and helps protect the environment.

Software, Features, and Uses

The main benefit is that this software allows users to schedule when their computer or laptop goes into a low-power consumption mode, whether on the job or at home. Computers consume up to 250 watts a month and account for about 10 percent of your bill. Savings vary depending on different factors such as the type of computer used, electricity rates in your region, use, and others.

Energy saving software allows you to schedule when to shut down the hard drive and screen. There are options for work and home settings. In general, different software applications are used for reporting, lighting control, real-time metrics, and bill monitoring and tracking. Other uses include energy audits and equipment management.

The main goal is to reduce your utility bill and show concern for the planet. There are reporting features that allow customers to set reduction targets and monitor their energy data. This is a useful tool to try and find cost-saving opportunities. And there are plenty of applications to choose from. Some are more complex while others come in the form of simple Excel add-ons.

Advanced Software

There are advanced applications that allow users to track and assess their use of heating oil, gas, water, and electricity. After creating records for each category, the user is ready to monitor consumption. For example, if you want to monitor your energy consumption, you should enter data such as cost per kilowatt-hour, daily use, and type of appliance. To record water consumption, choose from different household appliances and enter the cost per HCF and daily use or consumption.

Other applications allow you to monitor how much your household appliances and devices are costing you. For instance, you fill find out how much your oven, TV, charger, or computer adds to your bill when used for 30 minutes. The software also offers tips and techniques that help consumers to reduce their consumption. Multilingual applications offer users the opportunity to record and calculate their water and electricity consumption and develop graphical summaries. There are different apps that allow users to create and use figures and charts and identify possible source of wasted energy and when and why this happens. Visualizing trends and consumption helps users to focus their efforts in the right direction. Trying to manually analyze data and trends takes a lot of time and involves tedious data manipulation. Applications help users to create tables and charts that are ready for copying, editing, and saving. They have access to detailed reports, personalized charts, and short summaries and can create custom reports.

Software for Businesses, Landlords, and Executives

Landlords and businesses benefit from reporting software that gives them the opportunity to monitor consumption data and costs in a building. The software gathers and compares data and accounts for multiple factors such as occupancy rates, weather conditions, and others. Energy saving and emissions’ auditing are the main goals.

There is even software that allows customers to assess the potential and consumption of equipment and systems such as wind turbines, heating devices, combined heat and power systems, and others. Some applications even allow users to calculate rewind costs and come with project management features, currency conversion tools, and more.

Smartphone Applications

There are different smartphone apps that help homeowners to improve their energy efficiency. They offer customizable graphs and charts to let users see their carbon footprint. Some applications even feature informative infographics. Other apps allow users to reset the temperature at home from their iPod touch, iPad, or iPhone. The only problem is that they work with certain types of thermostats only. If you are looking for a new home, there are applications to compare the energy efficiency of houses in a certain area.


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