The best thing I ever did for my electric bills was get solar and a battery. The second best was install smart switches and occupancy/vacancy detectors. Even with efficient lighting fixtures, having lights on in rooms no one is in wastes so much energy. When I got the sensors working I saw an immediate decline in my day to day use
Agreed. I put motion switches in all low occupancy areas of the house (bathrooms, hallways, closets, laundry room). Those seemed to be the areas where lights were left on unnecessarily the most and they're the areas where we're generally moving if we're there, so it has worked out great.
For bathrooms with a shower, I set the timeout to 10 minutes so it doesn't go dark when someone is in the shower. If their shower is longer than 10 minutes, they get punished with darkness, so that has helped save water too. Everywhere else the timeout is 1 minute.
Lutron actually has a switch package that can detect people even if it can't "see" them. I believe it uses ultrasound. Either way, you can poop and bathe with the lights on, and it knows your there
For showers, I actually managed to find an ultra low flow shower that feels amazing, better than some high flow heads I've used in the past. I blogged about it here: https://pdx.su/blog/2023-01-30-a-good-shower
