Who doesn’t love the holiday season? Time to throw some logs on the fire, curl up with a cup of hot cocoa, put on some classic Christmas music, and drag those boxes of decorations and lights in and out of the attic or garage! But the holidays aren’t all cute carols and peppermint lattes. This time of year usually means shoveling out the big bucks, sometimes adding a second job, replacing those cracked decorations, burnt out lights, and of course the presents!

So, why not find at least one area to save some money, by putting those bright shiny Christmas lights (brand new or dragged in from the garage) on automatic timers?

You probably already use a system using those old school timers, but with those old timers, you can only set one schedule and that’s the schedule for every day of the week. But maybe you’ve decided to host your friends for an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party on Friday and don’t want to go around the house adjusting every single one of those timers so that the lights stay on later just to go back and adjust them again for your normal week.

By adding a few wi-fi smart plugs throughout your house, you have the ability to control anything that’s plugged into them directly from your smart phone or tablet. Using a simple app, you can control the settings to change every day of the week or even keep an eye on the energy usage to change it to a lower setting if you feel like you’re going over. With this kind of technology, you’ll never be surprised at your electric bill and you can kick back with that cocoa (or eggnog).

Stay tuned for more tips from the pros at John’s Electric this holiday season.