Revealed: clever ways to save on your household bills

Now we’ve said goodbye to summer, it’s important to plan ahead. We are now moving into the colder months, and with the cost of living crisis still affecting many of us, it makes good sense to save where we can on our household bills – and there are two significant tools that could help you cut costs.

It pays to be energy smart – and this is where the ingenious SmartThings Energy (STE) service for compatible Samsung appliances and the invaluable independent Youreko tool step in.

SmartThings Energy is a clever energy-tracking service via the SmartThings app*. It enables you to connect to your home’s smart meter, so you can monitor the energy consumption of your home and smart appliances in real time, analyse usage patterns, and receive energy saving tips to help lower your household bills. Armed with this information, you can make smarter – and potentially greener – decisions for your home.

Compatible with Google and Alexa voice assistants, as well as Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant, the SmartThings app is easy to use. To connect SmartThings Energy to your meter, all you have to do is tap on the Life tab in the SmartThings app, and then the STE banner. Just follow the onscreen instructions and add your smart Samsung appliances – it’s a piece of cake.

What’s more, the app’s intuitive design and SmartThings Energy service makes monitoring your energy quick and simple.

With the easy-to-follow graphs, you can view and compare your home's monthly, weekly, daily or even hourly energy usage and estimated costs, while switching to view specific appliances. This provides valuable insight into which appliance in your home is using the most energy and when, so you can make informed decisions on how to economise.

SmartThings Energy works with a large selection of Samsung washing machines, tumble dryers and washer dryers, including the ecobubble laundry range – appliances that mix air, water and detergent, creating bubbles that wash your clothes effectively at cooler temperatures, helping you to bring down your energy bills.

The benefits of SmartThings Energy are plentiful. Firstly, it gives you control from one handy app. The energy tool within SmartThings enables you to connect directly to your smart meter, so you can see how much electricity you are using and how much it’s costing – and by seeing the energy use of individual Wi-Fi-enabled Samsung appliances, you can use SmartThings to control the appliances – so they use the least amount of energy possible.

SmartThings Energy also gives you the opportunity to get into some better habits with how you use the electrical appliances around your home. For example, running your washing machine at a high temperature during certain parts of the day can lead to higher running costs.

By monitoring the energy usage of your Samsung washing machine through STE, you can begin to see patterns when it is expensive or less costly to run. By changing settings, you can see how much energy it can save you. It’s really that simple.

On selected Samsung appliances you can monitor and reduce your energy use with SmartThings AI Energy mode*. On washing machines, for cycles using AI Energy mode you can reduce energy use by up to 70%**

The Youreko tool is also invaluable. When you’re choosing a new appliance it makes sense to compare how much it will cost to run as well as to buy.

More expensive models tend to have better technology that will mean lower running costs, and greater savings on your bills. Currys uses the independent Youreko tool which helps you identify the appliances that can offer you the most savings over a product’s lifetime.

Youreko works by calculating the cost of energy that the appliance will consume throughout its lifetime, and it then compares it with the least efficient product in the market, classifying products from worst to best when it comes to energy saving.

SmartThings Energy and Youreko are a formidable team in the battle against household bills – so isn’t it about time you had this dynamic duo working for your bank balance?

For more information, visit smartthings.com/partners/smartthings-energy and youreko.com

*Available on Android and iOS via your app store. Internet connection and Samsung account required

** Based on internal testing on the WW11BB944AGB model on a cotton 40 degrees wash with the AI Energy Mode turned on compared to not using AI Energy Mode