Improve energy savings with your Nest thermostat

There are many ways to improve energy savings and lower your utility bills. Here are some steps you can take that can help reduce your energy use:

Set your Eco Temperatures thoughtfully

Your thermostat can switch to Eco Temperatures when no one’s home to help you save energy. When you choose energy-efficient Eco Temperatures setting, it will prevent your home from wasting energy while everyone is gone. The more efficient your Eco Temperatures are, the more you’ll save. Be sure not to set your Eco Temperatures too low or too high if you have pets, plants, or delicate items in your home.

How to change Eco Temperature settings

Check for the Nest Leaf

The Nest Leaf is an easy way to know you’re saving energy, and it encourages you to continually improve your savings over time. You’ll find the Leaf on your thermostat when you set a temperature that helps save energy. The more often the Leaf appears, the more you save.

Try an easy 1°F or 0.5°C change in your schedule

Most people can’t tell the difference between a room set one day at 70°F or 22°C and the next day at 69°F or 21.5°C. In fact, the difference in temperature between your nose and your toes is likely to be more than 1°F or 0.5°C. Adjust your temperature schedule settings by just 1°F or 0.5°C, and learn how much you’ve saved compared to the previous month in your Home Report.

Manually switch to Eco Temperatures

If you’re going to be gone for an extended period of time, or you simply want to save energy while you’re at home, you don’t have to wait for your thermostat to automatically switch to Eco Temperatures. You can manually set your thermostat to Eco Temperatures so it stays in that mode until you manually switch to heating or cooling.

Save while you're away on vacation

If you’ll be away for a long time, like a holiday or vacation, there are a few more options to save energy, like setting your thermostat to Off mode.

Save energy when you’re on vacation

The Savings Finder will help you

If you have a Nest Thermostat, you can get helpful tips from the Home app. When you enable Savings Finder, you’ll automatically get custom energy-saving suggestions to help you optimize your energy savings by making small changes to your temperatures. 

Savings Finder for the Nest Thermostat

Avoid turning up the heat or air conditioner (AC)

Most systems won’t heat your home any faster if you set your thermostat to a higher temperature, but your system will likely run longer and use more energy. If you want it to be 72°F or 22°C inside and you turn the heat up to 90°F or 30°C, it will warm just as fast as if you set the temperature to 72°F or 22°C.

If you turn up the heat or AC often enough, your Nest thermostat will learn these temperatures and automatically add them to your schedule, which can use even more energy.

Check your Energy History

You can view the last 10 days of your heating and cooling activity in your Energy History. It’s a great tool to build better habits to save even more in the future. If you want to know your energy activity over a longer period, you can check your Home Report.

Use 2 or more thermostats the right way

If you have more than one thermostat in your home, teach them differently so they build schedules for each part of your home that they control. You can save even more energy when you close the interior doors between the different areas of your home. This will help keep the warm or cool air where you want it and prevent your system from turning on when it doesn’t need to.

Teach your thermostat

If you have a Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd or 4th gen) or Thermostat E, it will automatically build a temperature schedule by learning each time you change the temperature. Your thermostat will never stop learning, so teach it good habits to save energy. Turn it down before you go to bed, or any time you would turn down a regular thermostat to save energy. Your Nest thermostat will remember these changes and adjust your schedule. You can find the results of teaching your Nest thermostat good habits in your Home Report.