Here’s How The Loop App Can Save You Money and Carbon | AD

This is paid-for content in association with the Loop App.

With energy prices sky-high and set to rise by a further 40% in the autumn, it’s never made more financial sense to save energy where we can.  And with climate scientists telling us that it’s imperative to act now to limit planetary warming, it’s never made more environmental sense to reduce our household emissions.

Right now it’s impossible to switch providers to get a better energy deal.  All suppliers are charging the capped price. Meanwhile, the few deals on offer to fix the price are more expensive, not less.  This means the only way to reduce costs and energy usage is to save energy where we can.  But just how do we go about saving energy? Step forward Loop.  

What Is Loop?

Loop is a clever free app, from Trust Power, that’s available on both iOS and Android. This app helps people to reduce their home’s energy consumption and impact on the environment, while also saving money. 

What’s so clever about the Loop app is that it integrates with your smart meter.  A smart meter is an energy monitor – it doesn’t help you save money on its own.  However, when you pair it with Loop its power is magnified.  

Pairing it allows Loop to analyse your energy use. From there, the Lopp app then shows you easy and personalised ways to use less energy in your home.  In fact, Loop says that on average, app users can cut their energy use by 10%.  That’s a healthy saving just by downloading the app, and the best part is that it’s completely free to sign up!

It takes 5 minutes to set up an account. Loop uses your bank card to prove your identity and confirm your address, but that’s all it’s used for. Loop doesn’t take any payment and can’t take any payment in future.

Once you’ve done that, you’re good to start saving energy.

Loop’s Handy Carbon Calculator

Should you be in a position to do more, Loop’s handy Carbon Calculator is another key feature of the app.

This calculator takes you on a net-zero journey – using your current home energy use and transport choices to calculate your starting point.  To start with, it asks some basic questions about your home.  These include the number of bedrooms you have, how you currently heat your home and the type of car you have.  

The calculator then shows you the impact – in carbon emissions – that various energy-efficiency and renewable options would make to your home, to get it to net-zero.  This includes measures such as insulating your home, going solar, going electric for your heating, and switching to an electric vehicle.  

How The Loop App Can Help You Go Solar

Solar power is now making more financial sense for people. After April’s price cap rise, Loop says the payback time on a typical solar install has reduced by 30%.  If you are considering solar panels, but are not sure if it’s the best option for your home, then the Loop app also has a useful solar simulator and solar playground to help you out.

In the solar simulator, you can test how solar panels and a home battery would work for you before you invest.  Using your energy data from your smart meter, alongside details about your house and weather information, Loop can cleverly show you the actual difference solar power could make to your monthly bills and your reliance on grid energy.  

Once you’ve tried out the solar simulator, and understood the daily, weekly and monthly view of what solar could do for you, you can progress to Loop’s solar playground.  Here you can see just how self-sufficient your home could be with different sized solar arrays and home battery combinations.

My Experiences With The Loop App

I gave the Loop app a try.  It was super simple to set up. After I put in our address details it automatically knew our smart meter code, and immediately started pulling in our energy usage data.

It took about 24 hours to pull together all of our data. From there, I really appreciated the ability to track our energy usage to see where savings could be made easily.  The handy dashboard tells you if your energy usage is up or down, compared to both your average day and week, so you can take action accordingly.

The dashboard also handily lets you know what your current phantom load is. This is the energy used in the background, such as when devices are left on standby, or consciously kept running, such as your fridge freezer or router. As well as letting you know what this phantom load is costing you each year, Loop offers you handy hints and tips to reduce this figure.

I was also able to see our last five months of energy use in one place. I found this helpful to identify patterns in our household energy use.  Because of Loop, I’m now conscious that Sundays are high energy use days for us. It’s handy to know this to allow us to try and be more mindful of the energy we consume on a Sunday.

Beyond saving energy, to be honest, I was sceptical about what Loop could offer me. We have already upgraded a lot of our home when we renovated it.  We installed serious amounts of insulation in the loft, walls and under the floors, and draught-proofed what we could. 

We’re also quite limited in further changes we can make.  We don’t have a driveway so installing an electric vehicle charger isn’t possible.  And from what I understand the roof of our tiny terraced cottage is too small for solar panels.  

However, what surprised me was the difference that switching to a low-carbon alternative for our heating source could make to our home’s carbon emissions.  As such, I’m really keen to investigate further switching to a low-carbon alternative, such as a heat pump, once we have the necessary funds saved up.  As we’ve already insulated our home, it feels like the hard part is already complete! 

How You Can Get Started

Ready to start saving money and energy? Download the free Loop app today and start saving!