The foremost experts have years of research under their belts when it comes to residential energy management and energy monitoring systems. As such, they are quite confident in saying that there are five crucial things that all EMS systems have to be equipped with before they can be taken to be truly great – and thus worth your money and time.

Remote control

 An excellent EMS should enable you to remotely control all the devices you have in your home. What is the value of peering into your EMS’ crystal ball if you cannot ‘reach in’ electronically and switch devices on or off? An excellent platform will enable you to manually set timers and flip switches to suit your individual needs at all times you need to do so – and also from any location.

 Intelligence

 An excellent EMS understands your habits and automatically works around them. A good EMS is not only ‘smart’ – it’s ‘intelligent’. While smart devices typically feature an internet connection and could be remotely controlled, intelligent ones do a lot more. An intelligent EMS is capable of seeing the larger picture and learning for itself – picking up on your energy usage patterns and habits, and offering suggestions or decisions accordingly.

Monitoring

 An excellent EMS should enable you to monitor your home’s pattern of energy consumption – from whatever location. You should be capable of login into its user interface (typically a smartphone app or web browser) from any location and seeing which devices are on and utilizing energy in the home. For instance, the foremost energy management systems will enable you to see whether you accidentally left the heating system on, or forgot to turn your dishwasher on. If an EMS can’t tell you all of these at a single glance, then you need to shop for an alternative.

Insights

 Excellent EMS offer insights that help you to utilize energy more effectively. It should be capable of telling the story of your energy usage in ways that you wouldn’t have otherwise been capable of working out. Which devices are sucking power on standby even when you aren’t at home? Is your heater or AC running more than needed? An excellent EMS should be capable of helping you to answer such questions – and even more.

Integration

 An excellent EMS integrates seamlessly with battery and solar storage systems. The ultimate EMS would enable you to monitor as well as manage, not just the energy you are using, but also the one you generate (as well as store), in a most cost-effective way. It will understand whether it will be able to save you the highest via pulling energy from your batteries, the grid, or your home’s solar panels directly, whenever the sun happens to be shining.

In conclusion, whether you happen to be tackling consistent high electricity bills, upgrading or investing in your batteries or solar, do not forget to demand energy management and energy monitoring systems that have all the features which have been listed in this article. Systems that tick all of these boxes will surely serve you much better in ensuring that you use energy most effectively at home.