How we calculate savings
The 'Proof Problem'
Delivering savings on your electricity costs is the core of what we do. However it also creates a problem of how to prove those savings, because electricity tariffs do not charge you up front, but at the end of ech month. Therefore you cannot directly compare two prices - one with Polare, and one without. If you have been using Polare for a month, you cannot see the price you would have paid if you had not been using Polare. This means the "other" scenario (either with or without Polare) is always going to be invisible to you at the time you make the decision to buy our service.
This is the same problem that you will have encountered when trying to work out whether a different electricity tariff will save you money. It can quote you general pricing information, but it cannot accurately predict how much electricity you will use and when during a given month.
Demonstrating our savings
Luckily, the historic market prices of electricity in Europe are public. We can provide you on request the schedule of operation for your Polare controller. So if you are really interested, you can match the time of operation of your controller (when the attached device was consuming electricity) and the market prices in your area, to confirm it is using electricity at the cheapest times.
Expect to see some variation here, as our algorithm is also ensuring your room is the temperature you want. So the schedule is not simply running the controller at the absolute cheapest times during any period, but the cheapest times to achieve the temperature you want.
(Getting the absolute cheapest cost from your heater is really easy. Just unplug it.)
Our savings estimates
This still leaves the question of what you and your heater would have done if you had not been using Polare. Our savings estimate compares two scenarios. We run both scenarios for your device daily as part of generating our schedules.
- Baseline scenario. What would have happened without Polare. Since most heaters have thermostats and timers, this assumes you set a timer (for the period you define in your Polare controls). It also assumes your heater would cut out to save energy at the point your target temperature (as you define in your Polare controls) is reached. This scenario represents the "normal" running of a modern heater / AC device without Polare. In other words, we use the most realistic scenario to compare to, not simply assuming you would otherwise run your heater 24 hours a day.
- Polare scenario. What happens with Polare. This uses the algorithmic schedule we generate and use to run your Polare controller.
When we quote you a saving, either on the website or in normal operation of your controller in the app, we are quoting the difference between the Baseline and the Polare scenario. So if you ran for a week on the baseline scenario and it cost you €24, and you ran the same week with Polare and it cost you €18, the quoted saving would be 25%.
REMEMBER. There is a difference between total electricity consumption, and the total cost of electricity consumption. If you are on a dynamic or semi-dynamic tariff, 2.5kW of electricity will cost you a different amount depending on when you used it. So total energy consumption is not a good indicator of what you pay for it.It is important to note that this is still an estimate. If you are using your Polare controller, the baseline scenario doesn't actually happen. If you disconnect the Polare controller, the Polare scenario doesn't actually happen. Since prices change by day and month, it is also not possible to run an accurate sequential test: running it with Polare one month, and without Polare the next month, as the market prices in each month will be different. It is theoretically possible for you to run what is called an A/B test (comparing two scenarios), but you would need two identical rooms and two identical heaters running for the same period. This is very rare and would also cost you more than double the money.
If you do plan to run a test like this, please get in touch! We can give you access to more detailed data from your controller, and we'd be really interested in your results.
Time period of our savings estimates
All of our savings estimates assume that you are using your device for one heating or cooling season. This is roughly 5 months usage - if you are primarily using it with a heater, we assume the winter months; if you are primarily using it with an air conditioner, we assume the summer months.
So although your annual service charge covers 12 months, we quote your savings based on only a 5 month period. This means two things:
- Your savings are automatically spread out over the 12 months. For example, if you buy a Polare controller in December 2024, your annual saving estimate will be for the periods December 2024 to March 2025, plus October 2025-November 2025. We do this to ensure that you don't feel you have to cancel your subscription every 6 months (which would be a pain for us and you), and to make it worthwhile buying a controller even at the end of a season.
- Any savings you make by swapping to the "other" type of device for the rest of the year (i.e. using your controller on both a heater in winter and air conditioner in summer) are a bonus. We will only recommend a purchase on our website if you can make a saving for one device over one 5 month season. Everything else is bonus saving for you. We can do this because the electricity consumption of heaters is very high, and due to weather patterns we expect most people in Europe to use a controller with their heating rather than cooling devices (exceptions may be the south of Spain or Italy).
What can you do to prove you are saving?
Here are some of the things you can do to be confident you are saving money with Polare.
- Check your electricity bill the month before and the month after you start using Polare. While there are a lot of factors that contribute to your electricity usage, most heating systems (even plug-in electric heaters) consume a lot of electricity, so will represent a substantial proportion of your total electricity consumption. It will be easiest to see changes over a longer period - several months or a single heating season (5 months).
- See when your Polare controller is active, and compare it to the public market prices. You can find market prices on the ENTSOE Transparancy Platform. On request, we can also provide you a computer-readable version of the schedule for your controller, for easier comparison. Contact support@polare.ai
- Read independent information or academic papers about dynamic market pricing and demand response (the electricity industry term for what we are doing). This is a widely accepted technology in industry: offering it directly to consumers is what we are doing that is new.
- We are working on a "Pause Program" feature which will allow you to compare the Baseline and Polare scenarios (see Our Savings Estimates above) without having to disconnect your Polare controller. If you are a Polare customer and want to join the Beta trial for this feature, get in touch at beta@polare.ai
Related Articles
Subscriptions
A Polare Subscription provides our savings service over a 12-month period. Subscriptions As part of your Polare subscription you get: Daily schedules delivered to your Polare controller to optimise your attached heating or cooling device for minimal ...My Profiles
This article is for: Polare App (iOS and Android) Profiles ( ) are how Polare organise information about your house, rooms, heating and cooling devices, electricity tariff and more. Think of a Profile as a preset for your heating or cooling device. A ...Setup
This article is for: Polare App (iOS and Android) Before this you need to: download the Polare app, create an account, and register your controller with the app. Polare uses Profiles to process information about your space, location, devices and ...Nominated Countries
This article is for: Terms and Conditions Nominated Countries Due to the nature of the Polare service, only some countries have electricity markets, supply and tariffs which are suitable for our service. This page contains a list of countries with ...Terms and Conditions
This applies to: Terms and Conditions TERMS AND CONDITIONS This document describes the terms of use (the “Terms”) for: a. the Polare subscription service (the “Service”) accessed through the Mobile Apps, Products or Sites; b. Polare hardware products ...