5 digital devices to help save energy and money
Times are tough. Is there anything else we could be doing to mind the pennies whilst helping our poor planet? Here’s some of our favourite everyday tech solutions.
This brilliant innovation turns wasted heat from computers into hot water for your household.
Computers get hot. Data processing has a devastating impact on our world. In 2019 it created the same amount of C02 as the airline industry.
At a typical data processing centre, 20-60% of energy is spent on air conditioning and then that heat is thrown out into the air. But with this device, batch compute workloads are uploaded to a cloud platform, which sends them to powerful compute servers attached to hot water cylinders in people’s homes. The waste heat from the processing heats the water in the cylinder, supplying 80% of an average UK household’s daily hot water. At no cost to the household.
Based on an average household hot water yearly usage (water heated using electricity not gas), the host could save up to £200 a year.
2. Fuelio
A handy vehicle tracking app that can help you manage fuel costs and mileage.
How is it useful? Well, it tracks your fill-ups, milage log, petrol costs, fuel consumption and GPS location. It manages expenses and lets you organise them into categories like service costs, parking fees or tolls. So, it lets you know exactly how much driving is costing you. It also gives you up-to-date petrol prices and will tell you the cheapest garage to go and refuel at.
3. Karma
1/3 of the world’s food is just thrown away. Karma is a food rescue app that allows retailers to sell their surplus food to consumers at a lower price – instead of having great food go to waste.
This means you can monitor your local restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and cafes and get in at the right time – it’s normally at specific times, often between 2pm and 6pm – to gobble up all your favourites at a cheaper price and save it all getting chucked in the bin. Winner, winner.
4. Loop
Loop is an app that makes your smart meter smarter. It can help you save 10% on bills, by showing you easier ways to use less energy.
Link it to your smart meter and it will do all sorts of clever stuff. It can tell you how much your next electricity bill will be, advise you to switch to a new supplier (and which supplier) and give you a detailed breakdown on what device is costing you what each day. So extra detail and analysis of all your daily habits to help you make choices and changes, then see their effect.
5. Smart plugs
Apparently, we waste an average of £187 a year by having appliances consuming electricity while on standby. Set-top boxes, games consoles and older TVs being the main guzzling vampire culprits.
With a smart plug, you can set timers for your electronics to turn on only when they’re needed. Or simply turn devices on and off from your smartphone. Here’s a list of the best smart plugs for 2022 according to the ecoexperts
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