A home battery on a dynamic tariff: why planning pays

With a dynamic contract, your electricity price follows the day-ahead market. That price changes every quarter hour, and your supplier bills per hour or per quarter hour. Tomorrow's prices are known around 1 pm today.

What does a battery do by default?

Most home batteries run in self-consumption mode: they charge from your solar surplus and discharge as soon as the house needs power. On a fixed tariff that is fine. On a dynamic tariff it leaves money on the table:

• It ignores the price. It discharges just as readily when power is cheap, and can be empty when it gets expensive.
• It does not charge from the grid. Not even when power costs almost nothing at night or at midday, or has a negative price.
• It does not know tomorrow. It cannot tell whether tomorrow brings sun, or an expensive evening.

What Novolt does differently

• A day ahead, in one go. Novolt works through the next 24 hours: your battery, your car and your grid connection together, against tomorrow's prices. And again every quarter hour.
• Charge when it is cheap. From your panels or from the grid, and keep that energy for the expensive hours.
• Plan with your house. From your own measurements Novolt learns what your house uses, and from the weather forecast what your panels will produce.
• Your peak stays low. Charging from the grid stays under your peak limit.
• You stay in charge. You can set rules, such as a minimum in the battery by the evening.
• You see why. Every decision comes with its reason in the app.

How much does it save?

That depends on how far apart the prices are, how big your battery is and how much you use. We would rather not promise an average: we work it out on your own figures.

Which batteries?

Novolt steers a battery through the hybrid inverter, from Solis, Huawei and SMA. All brands are listed under compatible hardware.