Taking on the Challenge with AI and Smart Home: My Struggle to Optimize My Home's Air Conditioning Settings
Every year, my family ends up paying high electricity bills due to how we use our air conditioning in the summer.
So this year, I decided to review my settings while consulting with AI (Gemini).
1. Our Home's Air Conditioning Environment and the "28-Degree Wall"
First, as a premise, the layout of the rooms in question is as follows.
Floor plan: A living room (6 tatami mats) and a Buddhist altar room (6 tatami mats) on the first floor. The rooms are separated by four sliding doors (fusuma), and I have folded the middle two to create an "opening the size of two sliding doors."
Living room (the room I usually spend time in): Hitachi RAS-AJ28D2 (W) 200V
Buddhist altar room (where my pet dog lives): Panasonic CS-282CFR 100V
The target room temperature is "28 degrees."
Perhaps because I'm getting older, 27 degrees feels cold, while 28 degrees feels a bit hot... because of this delicate perceived temperature, the challenge was how to keep it comfortably at 28 degrees.
2. The First Strategy: Making the Panasonic the Main Unit
In Gemini's first instruction (suggestion), it stated, "To use both rooms open, the Panasonic (on the Buddhist altar room side) is better because it has lower minimum standby power." I immediately tried cooling both rooms by making full use of a circulator and other tools.
However, while the Buddhist altar room (the Panasonic side) cooled down well, the living room where I spend my time wouldn't cool down. Even after removing all the sliding doors, it still didn't work well.
When I considered the cause, it seemed there was a large chest of drawers directly under the air conditioner in the Buddhist altar room, and the cold air was pooling on top of it, preventing the room from cooling evenly.
So I changed my strategy andswitched to using the living room air conditioner (Hitachi) as the main unit.
As a result, the situation improved significantly.
3. The Mystery of the "Thermos House" Revealed by a Graph
Also, when I checked the room temperature on the first floor using a "SwitchBot Meter" and other tools, I found that the corner at the back of the entrance was the coolest first thing in the morning.
So, I decided to turn off the air conditioning at night, open up each room, and just leave the circulator on.
When I graphed the temperature changes during the night like that, I got an interesting result.
Looking at the temperature changes between "around 0:00," when the air conditioning was turned off, and "around 5:00," when it was turned back on, the living room was 29.5 degrees and the Buddhist altar room was 29.2 degrees, remaining almost constant without changing.
Meanwhile, here are the changes in outdoor temperature (Outdoor).
The outdoor temperature changes gradually over time.
From this, we can see that the indoor temperature is hardly affected by the outdoor temperature between 0:00 and 5:00, and the temperature does not change.
This seems to be because the windows in both rooms are completely sealed with 'styrofoam' and the thermal curtains remain closed, creating a 'thermos effect' that maintains the heat (or cold).
4. Gemini's Next Proposal and Future Prospects
Gemini's next proposal after seeing this data was as follows.
During the day, use the living room air conditioner and make full use of a circulator to circulate the air.
After turning off the air conditioner at night, if the living room temperature reaches 28.5 degrees or higher after 5:00, automatically start cooling with the living room air conditioner (set to 28 degrees).
I immediately incorporated this condition into the SwitchBot app as an 'automation'.
Previously, I had the air conditioners on in both rooms separately, and I kept the air conditioner on constantly in the Buddhist altar room, especially because of my pet. As a result, my electricity bill in the summer was quite high, so I am looking forward to seeing how the bill will change in the future with these measures.
5. My Home is a Smart House
By the way, my home is actually quite a 'smart house'...
SwitchBot infrared remote hubs: 4 units (2 of which have thermometers)
SwitchBot temperature and humidity sensors: 2 units
Outdoor temperature sensor: 1 unit
Amazon Echo Show: 3 units
Amazon Echo: 4 units
As for smart switches, there are countless (probably over 10)
Now that I have a complete smart house environment, I intend to continue making full use of gadgets and AI to get through the summer wisely.