Automatically run devices when electricity is cheap with our new "Run on Price" feature

As electrification of home energy and transportation gains momentum, home energy managers like Zerofy can help optimize energy cost in an increasingly dynamic energy environment.

Rooftop solar is one component of this new energy world, and with our recently released “Run on Solar” feature, users can already optimize utilization of their solar energy.

Another important component of this new energy world are dynamic electricity tariffs. A flat-rate or simple time-of-use (e.g. day and night rate) tariff is increasingly misaligned with the actual supply and demand of electricity in a power-grid with lots of renewable production (wind and solar). So-called dynamic tariffs can solve this mismatch, by dynamically changing price signals reflecting supply/demand or other factors such as grid stress. These tariffs are already being made available in many European countries, usually reflecting the so-called day-ahead market price on the European electricity market EPEX SPOT or NordPool. (In Germany electricity providers will even be required to offer such tariffs from 2026). Customers who subscribe to such tariffs can benefit by savings from using their devices at the lowest price hours. This is particularly interesting for high energy consuming devices such as electric cars or heat pumps, but even with some appliances like dishwashers savings can be realized.

Of course, this scheduling of operating devices gets cumbersome when done manually. And here is where our new Run on Price feature comes in.

Automatic scheduling with “Run On Price” for smart charging, heating and more

You can use “Run on Price” to automatically schedule devices to run at the cheapest hours. All you need to do is to enable “Run on Price” per device you want to schedule, for example your EV charger or heat pump, or any device connected to a smart plug.

Each day, when day-ahead prices are published, our algorithm picks the cheapest hours and automatically schedules your device (e.g. EV charger) to turn on and off accordingly. In the Beta period the runtime is set to max two hours. In upcoming releases the runtime will be predicted dynamically.

Of course you can manually modify the automatic schedules at any time with an easy to use interface: simply drag the time windows.

Real end-user electricity tariffs for visualization and use with “Run on Price”

Most products and apps that display or use the (SPOT) electricity price. However, this is just the price for electricity but does not include grid fees, VAT and other fees. (We have written in the past about this difference and its potential impact.) So your actual price does differ, and some components like the grid fee may also vary in time. As an end-user it is often difficult to understand what these additional components are, and it’s even harder to find them.

Today we’re also launching end-user electricity prices in the app, starting with Estonia. All users need to do is to select their electricity provider and plan in the app, and all the prices are displayed in the app. This works for fixed-rate, time-of-use and Nordpool spot-based tariffs. Users can also select their grid plan, and we support all electricity providers of Estonia.

Of course all these end-user prices also work seamlessly with Run on Price.

Android, at last

Last but not least, Zerofy is now also available in the Google Play Store for Android devices, in addition to the Apple App Store for iOS.