Even if you’re not too worried about your energy bills, our philosophy is that it makes sense to use only as much of anything as you need. In other words, the best way to keep money in your pocket is not to be wasteful.
Whether it’s a hot water system left running longer than it needs to, a heater working alongside a window exposed to the cold air outside, or simply not knowing which appliances are contributing more than their fair share to your usage, there might be any number of inefficiencies you could easily eliminate.
There’s an ever-growing category of devices, apps, and AI-powered systems that now exists specifically to close that gap, whether by preventing waste outright, automating tasks so they run more efficiently, or simply making energy use visible enough that people can change their own habits.
Broadly, these tools fall into three categories: devices that stop waste before it happens, systems that make routine tasks more efficient, and tools that turn invisible energy use into data you can actually act on.
1. Preventing waste before it happens
Some of the simplest energy savings can be made by employing devices whose entire job is to stop electricity or gas being used when nobody needs it.
Smart plugs and power boards: These sit between an appliance and the wall socket, allowing you to schedule or remotely switch off devices that would otherwise idle on standby, like game consoles and entertainment systems. Many models track how much power a “phantom load” like this is actually costing over time.
Smart thermostats: Devices like a learning thermostat can automatically wind heating or cooling down when a home is empty and ramp it back up shortly before residents return, using geofencing (detecting when your phone leaves or approaches the house) or simple occupancy sensors. This removes the common scenario of a heater running all day for no one.
Motion and occupancy sensors: Paired with lighting or HVAC systems, these switch things off automatically when a room has been empty for a set period. These can be quite useful in hallways, bathrooms, and other rooms where lights are frequently left on.
Smart water heater controllers: Since hot water systems are often one of the largest energy users in a home, controllers that heat water only during off-peak electricity periods, or that modulate temperature based on actual usage patterns, can meaningfully cut both gas and electricity waste.
Smart irrigation controllers: For households with gardens, these use local weather data to skip watering cycles after rain. While primarily a water-saving measure, using one of these can also reduce the electricity draw of pump systems.
2. Making necessary tasks more efficient
Beyond stopping outright waste, technology can help everyday tasks use less energy to achieve the same result. This is where AI has started to play a bigger role.
AI-optimised HVAC systems: Rather than simple on/off scheduling, some modern systems use machine learning to predict a home’s heating and cooling needs based on weather forecasts, past usage, and even how quickly a particular house loses heat. This allows the system to run less aggressively while maintaining the same comfort level.
Smart appliances (washing machines, dishwashers, dryers): Newer appliances can select wash or dry cycles based on actual load size and soil level rather than a fixed setting, and some can be scheduled to run during off-peak electricity hours automatically, which is both cheaper and less strain on the grid.
Heat pump systems: Increasingly used for both space heating and hot water, heat pumps move heat rather than generating it directly, using a fraction of the energy of old-style electric resistance heaters for the same output.
Smart lighting: LED systems paired with daylight sensors can dim automatically as natural light increases, rather than running at full brightness regardless of need.
AI-based energy management hubs: Some whole-home systems now coordinate multiple appliances, solar generation, and battery storage together, using predictive algorithms to decide, for instance, whether to run the dishwasher now on solar power or wait, or when to draw from a home battery instead of the grid. This kind of orchestration is difficult to do manually but well-suited to automated systems.
3. Turning usage data into awareness
Perhaps the most underrated category is technology that doesn’t automate anything, but rather just tells you clearly what’s happening so you can decide to change your own behaviour.
Smart meters: These record usage in much finer detail (often every 15–30 minutes) than a traditional meter, which is the foundation for almost every other data-driven tool on this list.
In-home energy displays: A simple screen or app that shows real-time electricity draw in dollars or kilowatts can be surprisingly effective. Seeing a spike the moment you switch on a heater or oven builds an intuitive sense of what actually costs money.
Appliance-level energy monitors: Clip-on or plug-in monitors attached to individual circuits or appliances can identify which specific device is responsible for a chunk of the bill.
Solar and battery monitoring apps: For households with solar panels, these show generation versus consumption in real time, helping residents shift flexible tasks (like laundry) to sunlight hours rather than drawing from the grid.
4. Time shifting to take advantage of free electricity
Whether you use technology to help you or can simply change your own electricity usage patterns and routines, one easy way to get more electricity for less cost is to sign up for GloBird Energy’s FOUR4FREE.
It could hardly be easier: in the middle of every day, residential customers with an eligible smart meter are charged an electricity usage rate of $0 for four hours (some reasonable Ts & Cs apply).
While we developed FOUR4FREE specifically to reduce our reliance on energy later in the day when solar is less prevalent in the overall grid energy mix and overnight when it’s not in the mix at all, it’s proven to be a good starting point for people to be more conscious of what they’re using electricity for, not only when they are using it.
We think the incentive of paying $0 for at least a portion of your regular electricity usage is going to see households reduce their bills immediately and, hopefully, help them on their way to reducing their total usage over time.
Bringing it all together
Even if you can see an upside to all of the technology we’ve listed, it certainly doesn’t need to be adopted all at once, and none of it is mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the advantages of using these tools tend to compound.
A smart meter feeding data into a utility app might reveal that hot water is your single biggest cost, which then makes the case for a smart water heater controller. An energy display might show that a “vampire” appliance is running 24/7, prompting a smart plug purchase to fix it specifically.
The common thread across all of them is that technology’s role isn’t to force sacrifice; it’s to remove waste that nobody actually wanted in the first place, automate the boring parts of efficiency, and replace a vague sense of “the bill’s a bit higher than I expected” with specific, actionable information.
For most households, that combination – a little automation, a little data, and a little awareness – tends to do more for the energy bill than any single gadget on its own.