What is Tibber?
Tibber is an innovative energy company founded in 2016 in Norway by Daniel Lindén and Edgeir Aksnes. At its core, Tibber aims to empower consumers by providing them with tools to monitor, control, and optimize their energy usage. It leverages technology to create a smarter, more sustainable energy ecosystem.
In contrast to traditional electricity providers which are offering fixed price tariffs, their main offering in fact is giving their users access to real time dynamic electricity prices.
How does it work?
At the heart of Tibber’s platform is its smart energy app. The app connects users to their home, allowing them to monitor real-time energy consumption, control smart devices, and access insights into their electricity usage. At least in Germany, the real time users electricity consumption is monitored using their own Tibber Pulse device.
Here’s how it works:
- Real-time Data: Tibber collects real-time data on electricity prices and consumption. This data is used to provide users with insights into when energy is cheapest and most abundant.
- Smart Automation: Tibber integrates with smart devices such as smart thermostats, electric vehicle chargers, and smart plugs. Using machine learning algorithms, it automatically adjusts these devices to optimize energy usage based on price fluctuations and user preferences.
- Transparent Pricing: Tibber offers transparent pricing, showing users the real-time cost of electricity. This helps users make informed decisions about when to consume energy to save money and reduce their carbon footprint.
- Renewable Energy: Tibber actively promotes the use of renewable energy sources. It offers renewable energy plans and provides users with insights into the environmental impact of their energy consumption.
Personal motivation to use Tibber
I am convinced that the availability of my households real time electricity consumption is a motivational factor to more actively monitor and potentially reduce our overall electricity consumption. It also enables us to better understand device specific electricity consumption patterns.
Not having an electric vehicle, our general electricity consumption is rather low. Our biggest recurring electricity consumers are the dish washer and the washing machine. But these consumers can easily be shifted to times when electricity prices are low. And this is another motivational factor for me. Having low electricity prices usually means that the amount of “renewable energy” in the grid is high while the actualy demand is low. So being able to shift some of my consumers to such times allows me personally to save some bucks on my electricity bill but also to help stabilizing the grid through the alignment of my consumers to the dynamicity of reneweable electricity producers. Surely, our households consumption is neglectable when talking about grid stabilization. But imagining that there are 1000s and more households that could potentially shift some of their consumers accordingly, it definitely has an impact.
Review of first months using Tibber
As described before, we were able to shift running some of our main electricity consumers to times when electricity prices were low. In some cases we even used low electricity prices as a trigger to run e.g. the washing machine.
The table below shows that we were able to reach a comparatively low average monthly electricity price. The comparison in the table is made against the average electricity price in Germany for traditional electricity tariffs.
| Month | Personal Average electricity price (ct/kWh) | Average electricity price in Germany (ct/kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| January 2024 | 24,12 | 35,35 |
| February 2024 | 21,95 | 35,63 |
| March 2024 | 22,84 | 37,37 |
Source for the average electricity prices for households in Germany is the “Verivox Strompreisindex”.
For the sake of comparability the cheapest traditional eletricity tariff I am being offered as of writing this (25th April 2024) electricity would cost ~30ct/kWh. And such a comparison is not even fair as Tibber is committed to supply “environmental friendly” electricity while the cheapest traditional tariff does not care at all.
Conclusion
Overall I am very pleased with my experience using Tibber as my electricity provider. It makes my electricity consumption more transparent and motivates me to consume electricity for consciously.
Note: If you now want to use Tibber as your electricity provider as well and want to support me, feel free to use my personal Tibber referral code here. By using this link for the actual Tibber registration we will both get 50€ in Tibber store credit.