It’s a fun and cool technology gadget, but does Nest thermostat save money? Truth be told, I had my heart set on buying one of these regardless of the answer to the money-savings question. There are lots of things I already knew I liked about the Nest thermostat. Before we talk about the possibility that Nest might save money on my energy bill, let me delve into these:
What I Like about the Nest Thermostat
For one thing, I like the looks of the Nest. I like the large, round display. I like the round appearance with easy-to-grab, hand dial for turning temperatures up and down. I also like how I can change the display to analog clock, digital clock, weather, actual temperature, or set temperature. I like that I can adjust the temperature from any room in the house. Installation of the Nest thermostat was very logical and straightforward with the included instructions. The Nest company took every care and precaution to make sure all steps are followed. They even were smart enough to recommend taking a picture of the wiring before removing anything. I installed mine without having to turn off my main breaker. I simply took Nest’s advice, turned off only the switch to the thermostat, then verified the power was off by attempting to turn up the heat. I was very comfortable removing and reinserting wires and the installation was simple. Using the basic features of Nest was equally simple to learn. I grabbed the large outer dial and turned it to 70 degrees and voila. I was set. Next, I downloaded the app to and set it up for my iPhone. No problem there either. It is also very clear how to program a set schedule for the Nest. What isn’t so clear is instructions that tell me how Nest is actually going to learn my habits and program itself? How many days must I turn he heat down and up before it recognizes the pattern? After a week thus far, my Nest is still not adjusting temperatures by itself. What is also not clear in the instructions is whether or not I can use the manual programming setting and auto-learning feature at the same time. I setup a schedule and the Auto-Learning is still on and informing me that it is learning. Will the manual schedule disrupt it or will it continue to learn adjacent to my manual schedule that I have already set? This leads us right back to the question: How does Nest thermostat save money?
Does Nest Thermostat Save Money?
I have always used a manual schedule to program my thermostat. My thermostat adjusts according to our habits. I turn it down to 62 when I go to bed at night and warms the house back up to 70 by the time I get up at 5:00AM. At 6:30AM the temperature goes back down to 64 while I’m at work for the day. The house is warm once again when I get back home in the afternoon. That’s me. Well, after talking to a few people, I was surprised to learn that not everyone has a manual schedule setup for their existing thermostats. For this reason, the Nest company can probably truthfully claim that it saves a lot of people a great deal of money. For someone who already has a specific and effective temperature schedule, I see very little ways Nest’s auto-learning can improve upon that. Having the ability and convenience to set temps away from home and in other rooms in the house might play a small role in helping with the energy bill. So, my conclusion (yet to be prove) is that the Nest thermostat can save a household owner some money depending on how they were using their previous thermostat.
