These are electricity tariffs, from your energy supplier, that mean you are charged for your electricity at half-hourly, hourly or set period rates.

Most people still pay a fixed rate, which averages out costs over everyone in the network. So you end up paying the same list price as everyone else. This sounds fair, but really it means that if you use less electricity or use it at the least expensive times, you are paying more relative to the market price than someone who uses a lot. So people with small apartments are paying for people with big houses. Someone getting up early for work is paying for the party music that ran until midnight. That is less fair.

Peak / Off-Peak prices are similar to fixed rate. You pay less if you use electricity overnight, but more for using it in high-demand periods, such as dinner-time. Because peak prices are charged at the times when everyone usually has to use electricity (mostly at breakfast and dinner), then it’s pretty difficult to avoid paying peak prices for much of your electricity. So it ends up averaging out in much the same way as fixed rate.

If you are on a dynamic price tariff, however, you pay the exact price for that half-hour or hour. These are linked to wholesale or market electricity prices. The variation in these prices is much larger - usually at least 100% within a day, so using electricity at the cheapest time saves 50% off your bill. So can get much larger savings on your electricity bill.

BUT. It’s not that simple. You then need to use electricity at the cheap, not the expensive times. This is very difficult to know as an individual, because often you cannot see the prices. You also cannot see whether there are clouds over the solar farm that generates your electricity, or whether the wind is blowing at the wind farm. All these things affect the price of electricity.

This is what our service does. Polare does all this for you, so you can access those savings.

In some countries, many people are on dynamic pricing already. If this is you, Polare can very likely save you a lot of money on your electricity bill. If you are not on a dynamic tariff, you can do our calculator and consider whether it is worth it for you switching to one. We have launched our first device for heating and cooling because space heating alone accounts for up to 50% of the average household electricity bill.

EU regulation says that you must have access to a dynamic pricing tariff if you want one, so if you want to change to dynamic pricing, check your national suppliers and see who offers it.

Polare are not an energy supplier, we don’t work with any of them, we don’t advertise for any of them – we only work for our customers. Our service and hardware will work for you regardless of who your supplier is.