How small changes make a big difference in your electric bill

Your power bill can be confronting. When you consider that it is the summation of the various appliances and devices you ran in your home since the last bill – you feel responsible. When most of us think about how to lower our power bill, we think about not leaving the lights on, or turning off the AC.  These small decisions can actually make a big difference in your bill.

When you have a fixed-rate utility bill, the rules are simple – don’t use what you don’t need, and you’ll come out ahead. But your standard “fixed-rate” bill likely won’t be around forever. Although you may not have heard the terms “Demand-Based” or “Time of use” rate plans yet, your utility company is probably thinking about them.

As solar energy is increasingly used to feed into the grid, it creates a mismatch between the available energy supply and demand. Generally, supply is abundant during daytime hours, but demand peaks in early morning and evening. As a result, some utility companies have started introducing dynamic rate plans where the prices change frequently as an incentive to either use the excess energy to relieve the grid or discourage energy use when there is less of it. This is already the case today in several European countries including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

This can lead to some interesting practices: For instance, negative rates mean that the utility company will actually pay you to use energy, and, unfortunately, penalize you if you add energy to the grid. Exporting solar energy when negative prices apply ends up costing you money. And with rates changing as often as every 15 minutes in some countries, it can be a lot to keep up with. Nonetheless, in the midst of these challenges, there is an incredible opportunity. After all, who wouldn’t mind charging their EV or running their AC on full blast and getting paid for it?

With this in mind, we developed SolarEdge ONE, a cutting-edge AI-based energy optimization system integrated with the SolarEdge Home ecosystem to save homeowners money and extend their backup duration. SolarEdge ONE is engineered to navigate these volatile rate changes effortlessly, and it doesn’t require special APIs or connections to work. It uses a combination of predictive algorithms and real-time data to make optimal energy decisions for each home – for example, charging your home battery off the grid when energy is inexpensive or selling your solar energy by discharging your battery when it can earn more. So how much energy and money can all these optimizations save?