Automated shutters: keep your house warm and save money

Stay Warm and Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

With the current geopolitical situation having a knock-on effect on European energy prices, and new climate change regulations pushing us to improve our home’s insulation and energy efficiency, everyone is on the lookout for new ways to keep their house warm, save energy and money on energy bills without compromising on comfort.

But how can you stay warm without breaking the bank? It’s a serious question, considering that heating accounts for 66% of household energy use in France[1].

Luckily, there’s a rather simple solution: automated shutters.

Natural Home Heating Made Easy

Automated shutters are the ideal solution for keeping your house warm in the winter while also playing your role in the fight against global warming. They automatically harness the sun’s natural energy without you even trying, thus minimising the need for expensive and CO2-hungry heating.

In winter, windows act like a natural radiator, heating up your home for free. Aluminium or PVC blinds and shutters are excellent thermal insulators that can help lock in this free energy while also acting as a buffer from the wind and cold.

But manual shutters and blinds are not enough. If you want to truly reap all the benefits, they need to be automated.

Automated shutters automatically open during the day, capturing all the sun’s heat, and then close again at nighttime to make sure none of it escapes. Studies have proven that by using automated roller shutters and external venetian blinds , you can reduce your heating consumption by up to 30% compared to manual solutions[2].

That’s what’s so great about automation: it does the work for you. Your blinds and shutters are always in the best position, even when you’re not at home or busy doing something else. Furthermore, the centralised controls mean that whenever needed, you can open and close your blinds and shutters all at once with just a tap, making your life so much easier while keeping your house warm in winter.

Centralise Your Smart Home with TaHoma

To unlock the full potential of your smart home ecosystem with a centralised system, look no further than TaHoma switch and TaHoma app. With the press of a button, tap on your app (available on iOS and Android) or a simple voice command, you can instantly control all your equipment at once or individually.

You can also programme ‘scenes’ based on your daily plans. With the TaHoma app, you can take advantage of the "Thermal Comfort" scene to optimise your comfort and energy efficiency year-round.

Thermal Comfort Scene: Winter Comfort Made Easy

This intuitive, preset, and customisable scene automates your window coverings according to your devices, the season and the time of day. They automatically adjust to the right position, at the right moment, even when you’re away from home.

The Thermal Comfort scene offers different automation adapted to the season, summer and winter.

Let’s take a closer look at how the Thermal Comfort scene could make your home life more comfortable in the winter. 

First, you indicate in the application which direction each window faces. The app then recommends the best time for each individual shutter or blind to open and close. You can keep these recommendations, or change them based on your own preferences and lifestyle.

To be more precise, this scene can also be fed with additional data, for example with a sensor embedded in some Somfy products. Enrich the TaHoma scene with the sunlight sensor built-in the RS100 solar panel, or with the indoor temperature sensor embedded in the 1-channel versions of the new Amy® io wall switch range (link to add). The Thermal Comfort scene will use these data to improve energy efficiency of your home, optimise your thermal or even visual comfort. 

Let’s take a closer look at how the Thermal Comfort scene could make your home life more comfortable in the winter. Imagine your living room has several windows:

• In the morning, all the shutters open automatically one hour after sunrise, to fully benefit from the sun’s natural warmth.
• At dusk, all the shutters close automatically to trap all this heat inside for the evening.

This scene uses your automated shutters to fully harness all the sun’s natural energy at the best times throughout the day.

The TaHoma app offers plenty of help and guidance on setting up Thermal Comfort to suit your home, as well as any other scenes you want to create. If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ page on how to use the Thermal Comfort scene with and without sensors.

[1] Ademe

[2] Compared to manual solutions. Somfy simulations implemented with the support of Carbone 4. Depending on a house’s size, geolocation, year of construction, window equipment (roller shutter, EVB), 2021.