Smart thermostats are known for their energy efficiency, but if you want to get an in-depth look at how much money they’ve saved you on your bills, the Ecobee3 lets you take a peek at all sorts of usage information.
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The Nest Thermostat allows you to view its usage history as well, but it’s not nearly as in depth as the Ecobee3’s usage history reports. Ecobee calls its usage-monitoring tool Home IQ, and it’s the place where you’ll find everything you need when it comes to seeing just how efficient your HVAC is. Here’s how to access all of that information.
To begin, go to Ecobee’s website on any computer and click “Login” at the top. Unfortunately, the only way to view your Ecobee3’s usage history and reports is through the web interface.
Enter in your username and password, and then click “Sign In”.
Click on “Home IQ”.
If you see the below screen, it means that your Ecobee3 hasn’t been in use for long enough. It needs a full month before it begins providing usage history and other information.
However, if you open up Home IQ and there are several sections to choose from, then you’re good to go. On the far left, you have the total runtime for the previous month. In the middle, there’s the community comparison, which compares your HVAC’s runtime with other houses in your state. In the upper-right corner is Home Efficiency, which compares how well your home retains thermal energy compared to other homes in your state using data from other Ecobee owners. And in the bottom-right corner is the System Monitor, which shows you what times your HVAC system ran, what the temperature was set to, and what the outside temperature was at the time.
Click on “See Your Monthly Report” on the far left side. This will open up the total runtime screen.
The red bar shows the total runtime of your HVAC system during the previous month, and the orange bar above that is an estimate of the total runtime if you kept the indoor temperature set to 72 degrees. Based on this information, Ecobee tells you how much you save every month over on the right side.
Next, click on Community Comparisons in the sidebar on the left-hand side.
On this page, you’ll see your total runtime savings compared to the average savings in your state. Below that, you can see a more descriptive breakdown based on your different Comfort Settings, and which ones are saving you more or less.
After that, click on “Home Efficiency” in the left-hand sidebar.
This is a simple screen that shows how efficient your house is compared to other homes in your state. Basically, it shows how well your house retains its thermal energy. If your house does this well, your HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard and long to reach the desired indoor temperature.
Next, click on System Monitor in the sidebar on the left-hand side.
This is likely what you’ll look at the most. The System Monitor shows when your HVAC system turned on and off, and it also shows the set temperature, the actual temperature in the house, and the outside temperature to compare it all with each other. For our house, the HVAC only comes on the evenings and the A/C cranks up a bit once we go to sleep so that it’s nice and cool in our bedroom.
Another cool feature of the Ecobee3’s usage history is “Weather Impact”, which you can click on towards the bottom in the sidebar.
This shows how much the weather affects the runtime of your HVAC system on any given day. The higher the blue bars, the more your heating or cooling ran for that day.
Overall, the Ecobee3 knocks it out of the park with its usage history and various other runtime data. The Nest Thermostat’s usage history, while pretty, is fairly basic and doesn’t provide a whole lot of other details other than total runtime.