Make smartare use of electricity

If you choose an hourly rate contract with your electricity supplier and can reduce your consumption of electricity during the most expensive hours of the day, you can save thousands. This is especially true if your house is heated by electricity or if you have an electric car.

The price of electricity is determined by supply and demand

The price of electricity is determined by supply and demand
When demand is high or supply is low, prices rise. The hourly rates for the following day are set daily at 13:00 on the Nordic electricity exchange. The most expensive hours are the hours when most people are using electricity, which is normally in the morning and during the late afternoon/early evening.

Your electricity price will vary throughout the day when you have an electricity contract with electricity prices that vary by the hour, and you can save money by spreading your consumption to avoid the most expensive hours. There may even be individual hours during the year that have a negative electricity price.

The greatest potential for savings is if you also invest in some form of control equipment to automatically ensure that heating and charging take place when electricity is at its cheapest. A newer heat pump, if you have one, may have built-in functionality for this.

The owner of a house can save thousands

How much you can save depends on whereabouts in the country you live, your existing electricity consumption, and the price of electricity.

We have calculated that, during 2022, a detached household in southern Sweden could save approximately SEK 5 500 by choosing a contract with an hourly rate electricity price instead of a standard variable electricity price (changing once a month) and moving their heating to hours with a lower price. The household in the example did not reduce its energy consumption but simply moved it to other times.

See Ei's calculation in our article: Demand flexibility – how can it reduce my electricity costs? Länk till annan webbplats.

How to make smarter use of electricity

In order to reduce electricity costs by moving electricity consumption to hours with a lower price, you need to:

sign an hourly rate contract with an electricity supplier or contact your electricity utility to find out whether you can have a network tariff where the price varies depending on when you use your electricity
have an electricity meter that measures your electricity consumption every single hour (you can have one free-of-charge from your electricity utility if you have signed an hourly rate contract)
arrange to have the option to move electricity consumption to hours when the price is low (an increasing number of electricity suppliers and other actors offer technology and services for this purpose).