We hear more and more often about environmental protection and energy saving as the only way to preserve the nature that surrounds us and to guarantee a peaceful future for our children. Since the topic is delicate and important, we can find a way to combine business with pleasure: in this guide we will see how to use our smartphone and the most useful applications and to control energy consumption, (and consequently save money in bills) and carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions to help us be environmentally friendly.
In addition to home energy savings, we will also show you the best apps to find electric charging columns (for plug-in hybrid cars or electric pure cars), such as finding service stations that offer methane refueling (which is less pollutant of petrol and diesel) and finally, if we really cannot avoid the most polluting fossil fuels, we will show you at least the apps that allow you to refuel at the lowest possible price, so as to increase the autonomy of the car by spending the quite right.
READ ALSO: App to control electricity, gas, Internet and telephone consumption
1) How to monitor energy consumption in the home
We start from home consumption, which can be very high in terms of pollution; luckily there are various apps available to monitor the consumption of electricity, water and gas for heating.
For example, the Android Electricity Expense app allows you to record and monitor electricity consumption .
Just use the app to write the values marked by the electricity meters between two readings (let at least 30 days pass between the two) to automatically know the normalized average consumption rate per hour, day, week or month.
The app also shows a graph showing the rate of consumption over time and the total amount of energy actually used during each day, week, month or quarter.
If you know the average cost per unit supplied (you should read it on the bill) the graphs can also show the amount of money instead of energy.
For iPhone, a similar app is Energy Tracker, nicer graphically, but very complete to understand the habits of consumption of gas, water, and electricity.
With this app we will be able to enter all our consumption (water, electricity and gas) and then monitor our performance in energy and economic terms, thus discovering where we are wrong and where we can intervene.
We can also take a photo of the various counters to automatically insert the data, so as to make everything very fast.
2) App of energy managers
In addition to the generic apps that we showed you earlier, we can also use the official apps of the various energy operators who work in the free market ; in this way we will be able to immediately see consumption and energy expenditure, even before the bill arrives.
Below we have collected all the apps of the main energy suppliers (electricity and / or gas):
- Enel Energia (Android and iOS)
- Sorgenia (Android and iOS)
- Eni gas and light (Android and iOS)
- Edison (Android and iOS)
- ENGIE (Android and iOS)
- Green Light and Gas Network (Android and iOS)
If your operator is not among those indicated, simply search on Google by typing the name of the company that manages electricity or gas, followed by "apps", so you can find the page yourself where you can download the apps for mobile devices.
With these apps we will be able to keep energy expenditure under control, send self-readings, pay bills online and generally save money thanks to the instantaneous reading of the absorbed power (only for some operators).
3) How to find charging stations for electric cars (hybrid and full-e)
We can provide a great contribution to the environment by focusing on new electric cars, available both in hybrid versions (much more comfortable to manage, since they can also go with a classic fuel) and in fully electric versions.
If your car supports charging via an electric column, it is a good idea to have an app that can show you where to go in case we need to recharge.
The best app in this sense is NEXTCHARGE, available for both Android and iOS.
With this app we will be able to quickly find the columns in which to recharge, with indications on the technology used and on any prices, with the possibility of planning a long trip (with planned itineraries adding stops to the columns) and evaluate the tested columns, so as to help other motorists with electric cars.
4) How to save with classic fuels (petrol, diesel and gas)
By now we know that fossil fuels contribute to pollution and should be avoided, but too many cars cannot ignore them to work: if we really have to use them, we rely on these apps to be able to save on supplies and pollute less with the calculation of the pollutants generated for every trip.
Fuelio ( Android only), is used to calculate gasoline consumption and carbon emissions when going by car or even motorbike, to keep a record of expenses incurred.
READ ALSO: Find the Italian petrol pumps with the lowest prices
Just enter the information about our car, the type of fuel used and the route to be taken, also including stops for refueling; we will get fuel consumption and estimated CO2 emissions.
A similar iPhone app is Changers, which calculates both the emitted and saved CO2 by cycling or walking.
Really a great app to try to use polluting cars as little as possible and move around the city by bike or on foot.
If we have a natural gas car (which we remember pollutes less but still produces CO2) it can be very useful to use the CNG Petrol Prices app, available for both Android and iOS.
With this app we will be able to find immediately the service stations that offer refueling with natural gas, with prices and opening and closing times (we remind you that self-service methane dispensers are very rare, therefore we will have to plan the refueling when the station choice is open).
In other articles, we have also seen, about energy saving:
- How much a PC consumes and how much energy it needs "> Cost of computer electricity per day on the electricity bill
- Solar and crank charger for iPhone and mobile phones
- Calculate petrol costs on Google Maps driving directions
