Tariff Intelligence

Tariff Intelligence uses your tariff data to charge your batteries when electricity is cheapest, increasing average electricity bill savings from 60% to 90%. This function will work if you are on a dynamic tariff, which is a tariff where you pay different amounts for electricity at different times of the day.

How can I start saving additional money on my electricity bills?

By providing us with your postcode and current electricity tariff, we are able to understand how much you pay for your electricity. This allows us to identify when electricity is cheapest and charge the batteries during those periods. This means that when you are importing energy from the grid, it is during off peak periods, saving you more money. You will also be consuming greener energy and supporting the grid by reducing demand during peak periods.

Utilising Weather Integration to Maximise Your Solar Savings

The Duracell Energy Cloud integrates with local weather forecasts (pun intended) to understand how much solar energy you are going to generate. This is important because it allows us to charge your battery by the perfect amount during cheap energy price periods. For example, if your off-peak energy is 7p per kWh overnight, it is often useful to charge your battery in this period to supplement your solar generation. However, if it is going to be sunny the next day, you don’t want to charge the battery by too much otherwise you will end up exporting your free energy back to the grid! Cheap energy is great but free energy is better. Alternatively, if it is forecast to be a particularly dark and gloomy day during the winter, you may not generate that much energy from solar, and it may be best to charge your battery to 100% from off peak energy to reduce the overall cost of your bill.

How are we using AI?

Machine Learning models have been applied to Tariff Intelligence for the system to learn about how it is performing over time. If the optimal charging time isn’t achieved on a particular day, it will learn from its findings and implement changes so that your charging cycles are tailored to your specific system and environment.

Additionally, we use AI to analyse patterns in your home energy consumption. For example, if you host a book club on Tuesday afternoon, your system will learn that your energy consumption during that period is higher than other afternoons, and therefore the Tariff Intelligence will take this into consideration when making its decisions.

Types of dynamic tariffs

EV Tariffs

EV Tariffs are our most common request for integrations. These are a development on the legacy Eco 7 tariffs that provide a cheap period of energy during the overnight off-peak and then a standard day rate, all other hours of the day. This could look something like 7p per kWh for energy consumed between 00:00 – 05:00 (midnight and 5am) and then 28p per kWh between 05:00 – 00:00 (5am and midnight). These are particularly popular for EV owners as it allows you to charge your car overnight cheaply. We will also set our battery to charge by the optimal amount during this period

Time of use tariffs

Time of use tariffs follow the wholesale market which in the UK is half hourly settled. This means that every 30 minutes your energy price will change based on the wholesale price of energy. Typically there is a morning peak and evening peak which aligns with when most energy is being consumed in the country. Prices can sometimes even be minus allowing you to be paid for using energy although this is rare. If there is a large price increase in the wholesale market, the amount you pay will also be more, sometimes resulting in no “cheap period”.

Battery Tariffs

Battery specific tariffs are now available such as Octopus Flux. Offering multiple off-peak periods to charge your battery. They also provide some compensation for exported energy which is useful in the summer when some systems have an excess of solar energy beyond that of which the batteries can store.