The summer heat can easily drive up your electricity bill. You want to walk into a comfortably crisp house after work, but paying to cool an empty living room all day makes zero financial sense. Leaving the air conditioning running while you are at the office is like leaving your car engine idling in the driveway. Thankfully, you do not have to choose between saving money and staying comfortable.
The Magic of Location Tracking
Instead of relying on a rigid schedule, modern systems use a smart feature called geofencing. Think of geofencing as an invisible digital bubble drawn around your property. When you and your smartphone leave that bubble, your system knows the house is empty. It automatically dials back the cooling to save energy. When you cross back into the bubble on your drive home, the system kicks the air conditioning into high gear. By the time you unlock the front door, the temperature is absolutely perfect.
Thermostats That Know Your Schedule
Several excellent thermostats offer this location-based superpower to keep your utility bills low. The Google Nest Learning Thermostat is famous for its Home and Away routines. It checks your smartphone location and uses its own built-in sensors to ensure it never wastes power on an empty room. If you prefer a different ecosystem, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium integrates smoothly with location tracking through its native application or by connecting to a central smart home hub.
Setting Up Your Cooling Bubble
Getting this feature running takes only a few minutes inside your device application.
- Enable location permissions: Your thermostat application needs constant access to your smartphone location to know exactly when you cross the invisible boundary.
- Set your away temperature: Choose a safe, energy-saving temperature for when the house is empty. It should be warm enough to save money, but cool enough that your system does not have to work overtime to recover when you return.
- Include the whole family: Make sure everyone in the household links their phone to the system. You definitely do not want the air conditioning shutting off just because one person left for the grocery store while someone else is still sleeping.
Mind Your Pets
If you share your home with furry or feathered companions, you must be very careful with your away temperature setting. A temperature that is perfectly safe for an empty house can quickly become dangerous for a dog or cat. You do not want to dial the temperature back too high, even if it saves you money. Check with your veterinarian to find a specific, safe temperature range for your pets, then set your thermostat accordingly. It is crucial to remember that they cannot adjust the system if they get too hot.
Image Credit: Ecobee (Thermostat photo)