Tibber, Pulse Smart Home Module experiences?

Hello everyone,

we recently came across Tibber and are wondering if it would be something for us and if it is economical.
Does anyone of you use it? What we are particularly interested in is the hourly, dynamic billing, and this Pulse part that you have to buy for it.
Is that some kind of submeter? They throw around all kinds of terms like "Smarthome," but I haven’t really understood it yet.
Can you install the Pulse part yourself or does an electrician have to do it?
The idea is probably that it measures electricity consumption in real time.
We have photovoltaic, an electric car, and a fairly large battery storage, so we would presumably be well equipped for it. Although I don’t know if I can specifically say with our setup whether/when electricity should be drawn from the grid and when not. Depending on the price (which can sometimes be negative), it makes sense to feed everything in from the photovoltaic system and supply the household from the grid when the price (like yesterday) is sometimes at -40ct.

If anyone has experience with it, good or bad, please get in touch.

I have also dealt with this several times and there are a lot of user reports on Youtube about it. The Tibber Pulse is connected to your electricity meter (how depends on the meter) and it then sends your exact consumption hourly to the Tibber servers. The advantage is that you always get the current stock market electricity price (+ around 7 cents surcharge for administrative fees). That’s all there is to it. On average, it is probably much cheaper, as the flat rates of the old-school providers of course include a buffer. In my opinion, Tibber has the better solution here and we are also considering switching as soon as we come out of our current contract.

From what I observe, with enough technical knowledge, you can also automate practical things like, for example, turning on the washing machine when electricity is cheap. Occasionally, when renewables in Germany produce too much electricity (sunshine, too much wind, etc.), it can also happen that you get paid for taking electricity for an hour. The app then apparently shows a negative price and offsets it. With your storage and electric car, you can of course really take advantage and fill everything up. Whether that really works, I can’t tell you though. You would have to read into it further.

On their site, you can view the history of electricity prices. What immediately stands out is that it is currently very cheap, but at the beginning of crisis times it can also backfire (July/August 2022). As with the normal stock market, everyone panics first and the price quickly shoots up before settling again. However, with the current electricity price brake, the risk should be almost negligible.

No personal experience yet, but because of the heat pump and an already existing Home Assistant system, I am considering it.

First, you need to think about what you want to control with it, that is: Are your major consumers even remotely controllable? I would clarify that first. If that is the case, then calculate what it actually makes, because currently the electricity price at Tibber does not fluctuate so heavily that you could really save a lot. In the long term, I do expect providers who basically pass on the wholesale price within the framework of grid fees, then it might actually be possible to get paid to charge the electric car during a period of negative electricity price. As far as I know, however, we still have a few years to go until that works for the average citizen.

Do you want to make power optimization your hobby? Because with photovoltaic + storage you should already have the 90% solution. If there is cheap electricity on the market, you normally have cheap electricity from your roof yourself. The rest then has to be worked out hard. You also always run the risk that in a week of dark doldrums you will lose the savings of the rest of the year. I would ignore electricity price caps, because they only exist for one more winter.

Long-term, I do expect providers who basically pass on the wholesale price within the framework of grid fees, so it might actually happen that you get paid for fully charging your electric car during a period of negative electricity prices. As far as I know, though, it will take a few more years before that works for the average citizen.

On the large deal site there are regular reminders for Tibber customers. Yesterday there was apparently a price of 45 cents per kWh between 12 and 5 pm. So a price of -45 cents/kWh. It seems to happen now and then even already. During the day the price is also regularly at 18-19 cents. That is certainly less than a "normal" contract. We currently pay 29 cents and are thus already quite cheap.

Well, there are already modules that switch consumers fairly autonomously, as long as they are suitable for that. Have a look at Ohmigo, those are finished modules. Of course, it can also be controlled manually.

A photovoltaic system and storage does not mean that you cannot use them anymore. But, for example, if I need a lot of electricity at noon, I can set the storage to discharge lock and then draw from the grid. As soon as the price goes up again, I remove the discharge lock and voilà, I draw from the storage again. Meaning: price-dependent regulation and photovoltaic/storage are not mutually exclusive. Yes, the saving potential is lower because, over the year, I feed in more than I draw - but in winter I can also shift consumption somewhat to the times of the day when the price is low.

One thing should be clear: at some point, it’s just the joy of optimization and it no longer pays off. Just buying a small relay board requires shifting several hundred kWh from the worst possible to the best possible time window, and some things simply cannot be shifted. Not to mention the time invested. You should really enjoy it.