Valentine’s Day 2021 brought no love to Texas — that was the date when an Arctic front swept through the state, turning a winter storm that had already been described as “significant” by the National Weather Service into an event they dubbed “historic.” For the next week, the state would be pummeled by snow, sleet, freezing rain, and abnormally cold temperatures. Nearly 70% of the state’s population lost power at some point during the following week, and many were offline for days.

The facts are indisputable: Home energy use is on the rise, and it’s getting more expensive. Our energy sources become less reliable as demand — and severe weather — impact aging power grids. Mix in governmental strategies to curb climate change (California’s net-zero initiatives, for example), and the need for proper home energy management becomes apparent.

An energy management system designed to work in concert with a control platform such as Crestron Home® OS can provide tremendous benefits. The Adapt Energy® system from PanTech Design is one of the best solutions available in this regard. When energy automation is properly integrated with a robust smart home system, dozens upon dozens of features are available to the homeowner — but for the sake of brevity, we’ll look at five of the biggest, overarching benefits.

Energy management in the smart home industry is an accelerating segment: revenue from these solutions is expected to grow from $2.88 billion in 2022 to a whopping $5.33 billion by 2027 in the U.S. While homes with some kind of energy management technology account for nearly 17% of households now, that number will top well over 44% in the same period.

The home energy space is growing rapidly as more homeowners become conscientious of the environmental and economic impacts of energy use and conservation. In addition, people are looking for more security with their energy as many have experienced some degree of power loss in their homes due to natural disasters, rolling blackouts, and other circumstances out of their control. As a result of these things, homeowners have embraced renewable energy resources, like solar, and home energy storage systems. Home energy monitoring systems have grown in popularity as well, which provide energy use data. While these products have flooded into the market, they have generally remained as standalone systems with little or no connection to the rest of the home and do not provide much in the way of actions to address energy consumption. Home automation and its ability to control environmental systems such as lighting, HVAC, shades, etc., has tremendous potential to aid consumers in energy conservation and management. But, these two industries, home energy and home automation, have generally remained a world apart.