Savings Estimates
Estimates for the savings realized can be viewed in the app.
Note
The savings as are estimates and calculated compared to baseline cases. We try to stick to the principles outlined in international standards such as ISO 50006 and ISO 50015 for the used methodologies, adapted to the specific use cases and country where the SmartgridOne Controller is installed.
Because the calculation is based on baseline cases, the savings are indicative. They should not be used for billing purposes, and the used methodologies may be updated with a recalculation happening later.
Base methodology for estimating the savings
Every estimate follows the same simple idea: compare what actually happened to what would have happened without smart control.
Each morning, the SmartgridOne Controller looks back at the previous full day. Using the measured power of your installation and the energy prices that applied, it works out two numbers for every type of device it controls:
- The actual cost — what your energy actually cost that day, given how the SmartgridOne Controller steered your devices.
- The baseline cost — what the same day would have cost in a baseline case: the same installation with the same energy needs, but without the smart control of that device.
The estimated saving is simply the difference between the two:
Saving = baseline cost − actual cost
When the smart control saved you money, the baseline cost is higher than the actual cost, so the saving is positive.
How cost is calculated
To turn power into cost, the SmartgridOne Controller goes through the day moment by moment and prices every bit of energy that crossed your grid connection:
- Energy taken from the grid (import) is valued at your buy price.
- Energy sent back to the grid (export) is valued at your sell price.
Both prices can change throughout the day — for example with a dynamic energy contract — so each moment is priced with the tariff that applied at that time. Adding this up over the whole day gives the total cost. Doing this once for the actual situation and once for the baseline gives the saving.
Because every saving is the difference between two full-day cost calculations on the same real measurements, everything outside the control's influence — your consumption, the weather, the overall price level — appears in both numbers and cancels out. What remains is the value the SmartgridOne Controller added.
The baseline for each device type
Each type of controllable device is compared against its own, fair baseline — the most reasonable "what would have happened otherwise" for that device:
| Device | Baseline case (what it is compared against) |
|---|---|
| Battery | The same day without any battery, with every charge and discharge removed from the grid power. The saving reflects the value of storing energy and shifting it to better moments. |
| Solar (PV) | The same day without any solar production. This captures the full value of the produced solar energy — split into the part that offset your own consumption (valued at the buy price) and the part exported to the grid (valued at the sell price). When the SmartgridOne Controller deliberately reduces solar production (for example at negative prices or to respect an export limit), the cost that would have been incurred without that adjustment is added on top. |
| EV charging | The same charging sessions, but charging at full power from the moment the car was plugged in — the way an ordinary charger would — instead of the smartly spread-out charging. The saving reflects the value of shifting that charging to cheaper moments. |
| Flexible loads (heating, cooling, switched loads) | The same total energy spread evenly across the whole day, instead of concentrated at the moments the SmartgridOne Controller chose. |
| Peak power | The highest grid import and export peaks that would have occurred in the baseline (no battery, no curtailment, EV charging at full power) versus the peaks that actually occurred. |
The savings of all controlled devices are added together into the total saving for the day, and the daily figures are summed into the totals shown in the app.
When a day is left out
A saving is only reported when it can be estimated reliably. If, for a given day, the required measurement data is missing or incomplete, a price or power reading is clearly implausible, or a device did not actually follow the commands of the SmartgridOne Controller, then that device's saving for that day is left out rather than reported as a potentially misleading figure. This keeps the totals honest, but it also means the estimates are conservative: a real saving is sometimes skipped rather than risk overstating it.
Why savings are shown over a period, not day by day
Savings are always presented over a longer period — a week, a month, or more — never as a figure for a single day. A day on its own can be misleading, and the battery is the clearest example of why.
To save money, the SmartgridOne Controller often charges the battery when energy is cheap so that stored energy can be used later, when energy would otherwise be expensive. On the day it charges, that energy has to be bought, which shows up as a cost — so that day can look like a loss. But nothing was actually lost: the energy is sitting in the battery, waiting to be used. The benefit only appears on a later day, when the battery discharges and avoids buying expensive energy.
Looked at in isolation:
- the charging day shows only the cost, not the stored value it created, so it looks worse than it is;
- the discharge day shows an unusually large gain that was really "paid for" earlier.
Neither day tells the full story on its own. Only when enough days are added together does the stored energy get used up and the true saving become visible. For this reason the daily numbers naturally swing between negative and positive even when the control is working exactly as intended, so the app reports savings over a period that is long enough for these charge-and-use cycles to complete.
Your average energy price
A clear way to see what the SmartgridOne Controller does for you is to look at your average energy price: how much, on average, one kilowatt-hour of the energy you actually use costs you. By working out that price for a few different situations — all based on the same energy you consumed — you can see how much value the SmartgridOne Controller and your solar panels add.
Note
Mostly a production site? Some installations are built mainly to produce energy and consume very little of it locally (or don't measure that consumption). When the solar production is much larger than the consumption — more than about ten times as much — the price per kilowatt-hour consumed says very little. In that case the SmartgridOne Controller shows the average price of the energy you produce instead: calculated in the same way, but per kilowatt-hour generated rather than consumed.
Warning
Consumed energy is not the same as imported energy This average price is per kilowatt-hour of energy you consume, not per kilowatt-hour you buy from the grid. Your grid meter only registers what you import and export, while your solar panels can cover part of your consumption directly, without that energy ever passing through the meter. That is why this average price is usually lower than the price on your energy bill, which is based only on imported and exported energy.
With the SmartgridOne Controller
This is what your energy actually cost: the real prices of each moment applied to the real power that flowed to and from the grid. It already includes everything the SmartgridOne Controller and your solar did for you.
Without the SmartgridOne Controller, but with solar
This is what the same energy would have cost if you still had your solar panels, but the SmartgridOne Controller was not there to steer anything smartly (no smart battery use, no smart charging or load shifting, no curtailment). The amount the SmartgridOne Controller saved you is, by definition, exactly the extra you would have paid without it.
Without the SmartgridOne Controller and without solar
This is what the same energy would have cost with neither the SmartgridOne Controller nor any solar panels — as if everything were bought straight from the grid.