What was the draw that made up the difference? Lazy people who cannot turn off lights? Put in occupancy sensor light controls and save the money from all the high tech gadgetry. I taught my family to turn off things that are not being used.
Whether business or home, folks tend to leave things on. My business sites uses automation as well as "dumb" occupancy sensors for each bank of lights (there are about 30 ceiling mounted sensors in the building) and they do work. Occupancy sensors have limitations that automation does not.
1. Automation knows when we're away..so the pets don't trigger any lights...and anything left on is shut off.
2. The system actively samples ambient outdoor light levels and sets interior lighting levels accordingly. In my tests, dimming a Zigbee light cuts the power use about the same amount as percentage dimming. This the same principle as commercial "light harvesting", but done a lot cheaper.
3. We use night light routines that disable most lights on motion..so again cutting a lot of power use.
4. HVAC such as our ERV unit run based on occupation and are held off during peak power cost times.
5. On the commercial side, HVAC is shut down altogether based on security zones and occupancy. There are still schedules on all the stats, but they can manage HOME and AWAY states (there are nine stats) based on automation rules. This gives the reliability of standalone systems (security, fire, lighting, HVAC) but having them communicate via automation makes the overall system a lot smarter.
I'd say the five points above are the major ones as we've cut consumption up to 40% with zero behavioural changes.
The important item with automation is that once programmed, you shouldn't have to mess with it at all. Vera and Hue fall into these categories.
