Hi,
I’m curious about the support that electricity providers in Germany and Spain offer for retail customers using dynamic, day-ahead pricing. Do they provide tools like APIs to automatically retrieve and process prices, or hardware solutions to schedule device usage?
If you’ve had experience with dynamic pricing in these countries or others, please share your insights. I’m particularly interested in how providers help end-users manage their consumption. I’m located in Hungary, where dynamic tariffs are being introduced next year, and I’m trying to understand what to expect.
I can share view from Poland where It was recently introduced. Starting from 20-something August this year, it is possible to switch contract to dynamic tariffs. The law was passed earlier. As someone interested in energy management topic I’ve sent inquiry to suppliers on 9-th may, is there any way to know energy prices based on some sort of API call? Out of 5 major suppliers (PGE, Tauron, Energa, Enea, E.ON) I got only one answer, which was fairly generic (what dynamic tariffs are), containing no information how to automate process of price retrieval. I also called supplier who serves my property. Customer care office told me then, that there is a plan to have some sort of mobile app for end user, but without any specific dates nor details.
In practice all people who owe pv installation launched from June 1st are mandated to rely on dynamic prices, both for production and consumption. Value of energy they supply vary, depending on market need.
Fast forward to end of August, we started to see articles in professional media sources, that all suppliers are rather resistant in promoting variable pricing to individuals. They do not see any major business there, they don’t know how to price it. One of supplier contracts (can’t remember which one) assumed 0 PLN/kWh as bottom line of energy cost, so as individual you can’t profit from consumption.
Same article quoted fairly big sums needed to be paid by energy suppliers to access API of TGE (Towarowa Giełda Energii / Commodity Power Exchange), which allows grid scale producers and consumers buy and sell power. In theory there is a PSE (Polskie Sieci Energetyczne / Polish Electricity Networks), which provide some sort of price estimates, however these are no ground with supplier contracts.
To answer your question - at least in Poland, suppliers do not help consumers at all. This year (first year of dynamic tariffs) they keep business as usual. It might change over time.
In Germany, it’s now 3+ yrs since we’ve been having first providers of dynamic tariffs.
When it comes to hardware, their main challenge is to do dynamic metering and their hardware is to ensure that, either by having smart meters or by adding optical readers to digital meters.
They’re not into offering boxes to provide additional services.
It’s mostly Tibber to provide an API and an app, i.e. software/cloud only solution to control some consumer, for the most part those EV chargers they’re selling as well, not so much existing devices. There’s one major challenger to provide an all-in-one offering including chargers, solar plants and heat pumps, he’s based on hardware. Others from the PV/heating industry attempt to follow using boxes of their own, too.
But to the best of my knowledge, none of the tariff-only challengers or even established players is providing any tools, neither hard nor software based.
They’re all waiting what the competition is doing.
In Germany, all providers are forced to offer dynamic pricing by next year. It’s effectively the stock exchange pricing being forwarded so as Lukasz, too, said, there’s nothing to earn for them.
providers (in Germany: tibber, awattar, …) will implement hourly prices in theri APIs after they’re known
Provides also integrate live-information from your smart meter in their APIs
that’s pretty much the basis.
Then it differs from provider to provider. I’m using tibber myself, so I can share, that tibber provides an App an within that App so-called “Power-Ups”, which connect to the APIs from 3rd party devices like BEVs, household appliances, … And you have simple “IF-THEN” triggers in that power-ups, so that you can charge your BEV, if the price is lowest.
Other than that, you can of course implement the providers API to openHAB an do even more logic. I for example use not only tibber-prices, but also forecasts for my PV and use combined rules, for a smart use of my BEV, wallbox, heating, …
I don’t know Hungarian providers and their offerings, but at least they should offer an API, which provides hourly pricings and perhaps live information on your smart meter. That can then be used within openHAB.
hi,
I apologize for the delayed response and appreciate you sharing your experience. It seems customer satisfaction isn’t a primary focus here, and I expect a similar situation in Hungary.
However, newcomers like Tibber are making an effort to capitalize on the available opportunities. @binderth, do you have a list of the applets they offer? I couldn’t find one on their website. Perhaps downloading the app would reveal more.
Based on the screenshot, it appears they haven’t integrated IFTTT. Instead, they’re likely developing a custom solution to integrate third-party APIs. While this might take time and effort, it could be a significant benefit for customers and provide a competitive advantage in the market.
Smarthome: Athom Homey, Bosch/Neff smarthome, Home Connect, Netatmo home Coach/weather, Telldus
I don’t use any of them, so I don’t know what they do.
Yes, the PowerUps use Cloud-APIs from the vendors.
There’s really not much else to do, I think. You’ll get to read all necessary information from the Tibber API and then you can integrate all your requirements within your application of choice - openHAB also. Otherwise, you’re restricted AFAIK on Tibber price information only, no integration of solar power - or I didn’t dig deep enough. But that alone helps many of us, which just want to load EVs, if the Tibber price is low…
