Smart thermostat brand Tado is introducing a new feature that will make it easier to see at a glance how much it’s costing you to heat your home.
While many of the best smart thermostats can generate reports that show how the temperature may have fluctuated in your home over a particular period, this doesn’t help to visualize just how much you’re spending on heating.
This is something Tado is looking to fix with its new Energy IQ feature for its smart thermostats connected to gas heating systems. Energy IQ imports your gas usage and your tariff’s cost from a smart meter, if you have one installed, to provide a clear indication of exactly how much you are spending on your heating.
If you don’t have a smart meter, you’ll be able to manually input the reading from your gas meter along with your tarrif details to get the same info. You can even use the feature without inputting energy meter readings, although Tado says the estimate will be far less accurate.
Opinion: saving money and energy
Smart thermostats are already a handy way to save energy and money, as they ensure that, for example, if you know you’re going to be late home you can remotely switch the thermostat off to ensure you’re not heating an empty property. This new feature will ensure that you can see exactly how much money your heating is costing you, and may prompt you to make choices such as putting a jumper on rather than turning the heating up.
Tado isn’t the first smart thermostat brand to launch this function. Drayton Wiser offers a similar feature, called Insight+, which costs £14.99 per month and again imports meter readings into the app. Similarly, Samsung’s SmartThings app also offers a feature that also lets you view information from your smart meter in the app, so you can keep track of your energy usage in terms of cost.
However, with both of these, there’s no way to manually enter readings from your gas meter, which you’re able to do with Tado’s new feature
Tado says the Energy iQ feature will get even better in the coming months and will be able to use the data to provide suggestions on how much you could save both in terms of energy and money, by doing things such as lowering the temperature by one degree or turning on the geofence function, which switches the heat on or off based on your location provided by your smartphone.
With the price of energy on the rise and many of us tightening our belts, being more aware of just how much turning the thermostat up will cost us can be extremely handy. In the UK, 27 energy providers have stopped trading in the UK in 2021 alone, and energy regulator Ofgem has increased the price cap on bills to ensure the remaining providers can continue to trade.
However, this is hitting consumers' pockets hard. Heating and hot water are vital, so it’s never been more important to ensure you’re not wasting energy and money.
The features that Tado, Drayton, and Samsung are offering can certainly help with this, and it seems logical that other smart thermostat manufacturers will follow suit, allowing more of us to use information about our energy tariffs to find out just how much we’re spending on keeping warm.
