Texas is no stranger to the woes of a harsh winter. In February 2021, one of the most catastrophic winter weather events on record wreaked havoc across the entire state of Texas.
Winter Storm Uri, otherwise known as Snowmageddon, demanded a record 69,692 megawatts of electricity. Then, the storm subsequently caused the biggest outage the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) or the state of Texas has ever endured.
Thankfully, we’re learning from these catastrophes, and in 2022 there are smart home solutions to insulate us against these energy emergencies.
With advances in the efficient energy space and new legislation aimed at making these upgrades more affordable, there has never been a better time to arm your home against an outage. From solar panels to home energy storage solutions, emerging technology is creating new avenues to alleviate extreme energy usage.
Also, as intelligent home technology advances, integrating them is becoming easier than ever.
The Savant Solution
Savant is a smart home technology company that’s pioneering integrated home energy solutions. In their mission of making smarter electrical panels, they’ve engineered an intuitive solution for monitoring and controlling power flow throughout your entire home. They call this technology the Savant Power System.
Ian Roberts, Vice President of Channel Marketing and Education for Savant, believes this technology is crucial, especially on our independent energy grid.
“Smart power is absolutely one of those things that can be beneficial in insulating against outages,” says Ian. “It’s also important to just have a better strategy for how the home is powered on a daily basis.”
Essentially, Savant delivers smarter power with integrations into existing breaker boxes. These allow homeowners to monitor, control, and throttle the energy throughout their homes through an intuitive smartphone interface.
The Savant Power Systems prevent outages in two ways: More control over your home’s energy usage allows for significantly less strain on the grid; and in the event that the grid goes down, this system can connect to a generator and strategically distribute these resources throughout your entire home.
“This solution allows you to choose what portions of the home you want to power,” Roberts said. “There are different needs through the home during a power outage. This system allows you to strategize power usage so that you don’t need a huge generator across the whole home.”
An Expert Opinion
Alan Hoffmann is President of Hoffmann Homes, Four Tree Development, and serves as a Technical Advisor to the City of Dallas’s Environmental Division. He caught up with Daltxrealestate.com to discuss some of the ways this tech can be especially beneficial.
“One thing you want lookout for is phantom currents,” Hoffmann said. “These come from devices like your television or appliances that are plugged in but remain on standby. Devices like the Savant system are great ways to monitor and prevent that.”
Savant In The Feild
Jonathan Lane, a local integrator with ARC Sound + Vision, has a lot of experience installing Savant technology. To him, it all comes down to ease of use.
“I’d say the biggest thing we hear from homeowners is how intuitive this technology is,” Lane said. “Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of data you can monitor. If you look at the dashboard, it does get pretty granular, but the interfaces allow users to control it in the same way you’d control your phone. Bottom line, it’s easy to use, reliable, and does what it says it does.”
There’s Never Been an Easier Time to Get Efficient
Recently, congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act to help homeowners afford smart home technology such as this. In this $369 billion act, energy-efficient home technology purchases qualify for a tax rebate of 30 percent.
Hopefully, this promotes energy efficiency and alleviates the strain as we head into another unpredictable winter.
