Tibber – the Electric power company for the future

Electric power companies, in general, are pretty much the same. Tibber however, is unlike any electricity company I had seen before. They try to utilise the data we get from smart devices, which they also sell, to save electricity, money and the environment, as well as improving comfort. It’s a tall order, but does it work?

To be clear, this post is not sponsored by Tibber, and I actually bought all the accessories from other sources – even though Tibber also sells these directly. However, if you want to try Tibber after reading this post, you can use my referral link. We then each get a kr 500,- / €50 credit at the Tibber store to buy smart devices.

I’ve been following Tibber from the sidelines for about two years. At the time, I was locked into a 3 year fixed price deal. I therefor couldn’t switch to Tibber quite yet. Just a few weeks ago, I finally made the switch. So how does it change things?

First of all, switching to Tibber has been the smoothest experience I’ve had in this kind of area. Everything is done through the app, and it’s just been really easy. And the support is awesome! That’s not something I say often.

How does it work? You pay a fee each month, here in Norway that is kr 39,- (€ 3,89 at the time of writing) and for that you get all the advantages that the app has to offer, like machine learning based control of your AC or smart scheduling the EV-charger. Then you pay for the electricity you consume, which is guaranteed renewable. In Norway, that is almost a given, but still, good to know.

My favorite power ups:

The real value of Tibber is how it ties in with smart devices, and here are some of my favorites.

Tibber Pulse

This is a device you connect to your smart meter. You now get a read-out of your power consumption every two seconds. Pretty handy if you want to find out what stuff around your house draws how much power. Flip a switch, and the change shows up pretty much instantly.

It helps Tibber analyse what draws power in your house. However, there are several other potential use cases for this, like preventing overloading the main fuse or keeping on eye on your total electric load. This could be useful if your electricity bill also is effected by your peak power consumption each month.

Sensibo Sky

This device controls your AC using the same IR signals that your remote would use. And this is a nice device in itself, but combining it with Tibber makes it even better. You can allow Tibber to control the AC, taking into accout weather forecast, thermal lag and electricity rates. This feature alone, is a thing of beauty, and in our experience it really works great!

Smart EV charging

This is all about charging your car when it’s cheap. We have a Tesla in our household, and Tibber now automates when the car starts charging. They support many car brands (if you cars is somehow connected to the internet), as well as direct integration with the easee charger which works regardless of the car you have. I consider this a “turn it on and forget about it feature” – which is the best kind in my humble opinion.

Another advantage of the car charging setup is that you can separate what drives your electricity consumption. For example, we can now clearly see that the car is in fact 40% of our total usage, how much it cost, historic data of when you charged it, etc.

Conclusion

All in all, I am very happy with having switched to Tibber. The app gives you a ton of a data, and makes it very clear how much you use, let’s you know if the power rates are gonna be extra expensive or cheap, etc. If you are nerdy about this stuff, I don’t see any real competition out there.

In our household, the power usage from charging the car, is close to 50% of our total power usage. But because we charge when the rates are cheaper, it actually saves us a substantial percentage in terms of cost. Even though we had a very good fixed rate price, because we use so much power at night, switching to Tibber has already shown to save us money in the short term.

To be clear, this post is not sponsored by Tibber, and I actually bought all the accessories from other sources – even though Tibber also sells these directly. However, if you want to try Tibber after reading this post, you can use my referral link. We then each get a kr 500,- / €50 credit at the Tibber store to buy smart devices.

I'm a webdeveloper based in Oslo, Norway. I currently work with web development at Nettmaker.

I would like to change the world, but they won't give me the source…

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