Make money on Tibber Grid Rewards - Deep dive in how it works, Q&A

[@Yggdrasil42]

I've had it in The Netherlands for a few months. Received about €9-10 per month so far.

[@swmike]

I have GR working via direct connection via my Tesla. My Easee is broken (getting it replaced soon) so it might be that they turned on GR for me based on the Easee, but it works also via Tibber integration with Tesla (I'm currently using 3x8A portable charger).

[@michah1896]

Thanx Bjorn for this video. This topic of bev integration into the grid is so much unerrated. Your video from Denmark with the eNV 200 fleet from many years ago was such an eye opener to me and it has been quite frustrating that almost nothing has come after that from the market. What a waste of resources of having bevs sitting around with their big batteries and not being used as storage while we keep burning oil, coal and gas at the power stations. Thanks for the topic big time! I think it is ok that you are accepting payments from tibber as long as you keep announcing it, stay critical and don't get stressed by that, haha.

[@yourobson]

As I understand Tibber rewards you for using smart charging and allowing Tiber to pause charging when the grid is overloaded. I use smart charging anyway as it charges when the prices are lowest that is mostly when grid is not overloaded. The only negative scenario would be that when I need to charge when the demand for energy is high then Tiber might interfere with my charging. As I understand.

[@Yggdrasil42]

In my experience it's been mostly the opposite. Tibber will tell the charger to charge outside of your smart charging plan for short sessions at a significantly reduced price. It can happen at anytime so it's not visible in your plan until after it's happened. Yesterday I had 5 grid rewards sessions of about half an hour each at about half price. My car was almost full after that so the smart charging plan was adjusted to just charge the remaining percentage during cheap hours.

[@ziggyyo]

@yourobson What we need to learn: The grid is not only overloaded, when too many consumers are pulling too much energy. The grid is also overloaded, when too many suppliers are pushing too much energy into the grid. It’s like a scale that always must be kept in balance. Users who are helping to keep the balance are rewarded.

[@yourobson]

@@ziggyyo Yes and now in summer there is more supply of energy from the solar panels and less demand due to less heating needed. However for car charging the oversupply of energy could be balanced (somehow) by lowering prices.

[@ziggyyo]

@@yourobson As far as I understand, the energy demand and renewable energy supply - and the resulting market price - *for the next day* are estimated for every 15-minute-interval one day in advance. If the real energy supply and real demand on the next day differ from the forecast in such a 15-minute-interval, authorized suppliers and consumers get separate rewards for quick interventions to balance the grid.

[@yourobson]

@@ziggyyo I think you nailed it. This is more granular way of controlling the grid demand. Tibber pushes the button to Charge or Pause charging their connected cars depending on the current status of the net.

[@StefanPettersson]

A few Tibber questions I have been thinking about: 1. How local is need for balancing in the grid? Will cars from a local area be used or does it not matter so all connected cars can be used? 2. Will the possibility of making money be reduced when more users and devices are connected? 3. Will EVs be a major part in balancing the grid in the future?

[@volvocars5189]

Wise questions! As for now, "balancing the grid" relates to national level (frequency), but grid congestion is more common in the local grid where balancing of voltage and power flows matter more.

[@kpl9439]

Very good question. Grid balancing is both usefull for local use as it is for national use. But since the capacity of an ev is rather low, ev's are only usefull for international use if many of them are connected. They are way more usefull on local level 'for now' as the renewable energy levels rise the ask for storage will rise for grid ballensing. Now the reason it is usefull for local use is as follows: Imagine a street with 20 houses. The transformer is on the top of the street and a cable starts from there. Now imagine a suny day and all the houses have solar(this is just an example) every house will push the voltage up. So imagine the transformer is pushing out 230V. If every house pushes the voltage by 3V, the last house would get 290v volt, way over the allowed 254V max. A battery on this line could get the voltage back down. Just the same way in other direction. Imagine a dark cold day. Yhen every house suddenly puls the net by 3V. The end house only gets 170V. So now you want a battery to push te voltage back up and inject into the net locally. This is an exageraion offcoarse, but you get the idea.

[@volvocars5189]

Thanks for the video Bjørn. Is called ancillary services, right? Tibber is contributing to the FFR or FCR market by stopping or starting charging. In a couple of years it also should be able to dischange power if the grid allows so.

[@agoatmannameddesire8856]

Trying to wrap my brain around it - how is this different from other Demand Response services? Maybe because it's specifically frequency balancing? My utility does somethings with Demand Response, i.e. HVAC, water heaters, and EV charging, but I don't know if they'll trigger it specifically for frequency balancing purposes or if they're just shifting demand to off-peak times.

[@steinmar2]

Frequency control probably second and tertiary maybe primary (needs very quick response times) and balancing energy market = ancillary services the ISO15118 charging standard between car and evse (wall connector) has already (value added services) foreseen The car has to support- software updates needed so tesla is best to prepared

[@MikaelKarstrom]

Sounds interesting. But you still need to pay to the electric network owner for transportation fee 😢

[@ChristianBorchgrevinkVigeland]

Wondering if this tears and wears the components faster with "lots" of on/off?

[@Torgrim5958]

Connected my car on friday. It charged 11kw for 25 minutes. NOK 2.28 made. Problem is, price at charging 0,49 price plus high net charge 0,21. Price evening 0,22 plus low net charge 0,11. Soon not big difference.

[@ChristopherWoods]

Interesting to see if this can be used as a genuine method of grid balancing. I suppose it will largely depend on getting through the technical and logistical challenges of communicating with loads of manufacturers’ proprietary vehicles, and if the time granularity they need will be exposed through charger or vehicle APIs. Do you often have plunge/negative KwH pricing in Norway? We only had a few brief evenings with negative priced energy time-windows recently, which was after a LOT of high winds and heavy rainfall. I suspect they’re also concerned about keeping the grid frequency very close to 50 Hz, instead of just having a ready source of feed-in power for grid. It’s not just devices which can be damaged by frequency droop, the grid itself can be damaged or have to emergency shutdown in severe cases. Very interesting about the dual tariff pricing on your energy supply. The UK as a whole is very uneducated when it comes to the detail of electricity supply, people have become used to it just being an infinite supply with no complications.

[@barneysmac]

If you have solar panels is charging from grid rewards better than direct from your solar panels? (I presume so as you get paid for charging your car) I have a Wallbox changer that can do both but I am interested if anyone has experience with this?

[@CraftyStorm]

Does it work with home battery?

[@JW-mx3qg]

So, it’s pretty much like BMW’s Charge forward? It would work similar with saving $ benefits

[@evahsia]

Just leaving a vehicle plugged in and not used won't help. Once it is at 100%, there is no further charging, and no further savings. (The load is already shed.) This load shedding will work best if you use a significant portion of your battery each day. Also, I think calling it a VPP is misleading. A VPP (virtual power plant) can actually provide power to the grid, not just load shed. We need V2G for this to provide true VPP functionality.

[@Danne89]

Weird answer from Tibber on #2 and #3. As it works now you get money based on how much kWh you used under the time period that GR was activated (for me it's usually 30 min at a time). So how can you earn the same on 3.7kW vs 11kW? Makes zero sense! Regarding #4 I already use the suggested tip to remove all departure times on my smart charging in Tibber app. It barely tries to put anything into the battery except with GR. Works okay so far. Tibber support said that a "only use GR"-button might be coming.

[@evahsia]

I think that it is simply they can charge with the 3.7 kW system for a longer time than the 11 kW system. This gives more flexibility in grid planning. You may get 30-minute sessions, but the 3.7 kW system might get 90-minute sessions. (Same money.) If they need a just little bit of power during the 90-minute session for grid stabilization, then the 3.7 kW system is more useful. Of course, when they can control the output of the charger (not just on/off) then they will be able to make the 11 kW system look like a 3.7 kW system when needed.

[@mateuszbalon3762]

Side question, where can we find 7 days forecast for el prices? You mentioned that in question 4

[@kjetilseljelid1739]

The app called "Byge" offers the 7-day forecast for free. Fjordkraft has it for their customers. The forecast is made by the company Volue. "Byge" was created by Haugaland Kraft.

[@Torgrim5958]

Tibber must improve its communications. Its clear that the people answering this do not fully understand how this works. Looking at the behavior for me there is short events from 5 minutes to 45 minutes. Most of these events have a price of around - 90 øre/Kwh. If you take more power during these events you earn more. Last week i made about 50 nok and only charged on reward session. Problem now is battery is at 90% and I can't keep driving enough. Considering leaving climate on to drain the battery😮.

[@michah1896]

I hope someone finally will come up with an offer for grid rewarding public charging for all those people like me withount a personl charging spot. At least some place with grid rewarding charging prices such as sunday charging during noon in summer. Stop wasting precious kWh!

[@Dipper737]

But you loose the 20% price garantie when you activate it.

[@timberthewolf733]

So they are paying you 100 a year to let them automatically shift your charging use.

[@timberthewolf733]

Kinda like how power utilities in the US give away smart thermostats so they can pre cool your house so not everyones AC is on at the same time.

[@Gh0stHack3r.]

Yes tibber is just using it's customers, not giving anything useful back... then mess up your normal use in your home..

[@Yggdrasil42]

⁠They're giving back by reducing the price significantly during those charging sessions. I've had Grid Rewards for two months now and it's worked well. My house hasn't suffered in any way. Why do you think it would? They're not charging faster than you normally would.

[@ziggyyo]

@@Gh0stHack3r. You are getting something useful back if you help to balance the grid: (1) A stable grid is good for all consumers and suppliers (2) You benefit from lower energy prices (3) You still can use the grid even in high load situations, if many other consumers voluntarily are helping to balance the grid.

[@kevinerickson2595]

Toootally awesome 🤔

Virtual LOAD, not powerplant :) Big industries will activate these features soon so this period of good money for pausing your EV-Charger is probably short lived. Very good idea anyways!!

[@januszkaminski2731]

There is now way this can be pulled.the only route this can be achieved with is what Octopus energy is doing in the uk. Namely through the use of v2g chadamo adapter. But the contract also has to be unintimidating, octopus as far as i understand pledges to use only small percentage of your battery. Leaf for the win then!!!

[@achtungpolizei7614]

👍

[@paescu_2k350]

Cybertruck interior review when?

[@bjornnyland]

Next week

[@achtungpolizei7614]

Youre in good mood. Well well well 👍

[@paescu_2k350]

@@bjornnyland thanks

[@AaronStarkLinux]

You are funny Paescu 😂

[@tridrean]

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[@AaronStarkLinux]

So they are Data Recollectors that use you as their product, but they will give you 100€/year selling that data 10 times more than that.

[@MarkusAJ]

They're not selling your data, you are not the product. The product is grid stability. You get a kickback for allowing them to adjust your charging according to the need of the grid.

[@AaronStarkLinux]

@@MarkusAJ That is data recollection for the grid needs.

[@Jajalaatmaar]

So... How do I sell it for the "real" price?

[@ziggyyo]

The rewards paid to Tibber to balance the grid probably depend on the criticality, difficulty, Tibber‘s balancing capabilities and the grid‘s potential and real demand for balancing services. Tibber needs to adjust the payout to their customers in a way, that they receive a sufficient incentive to be part of Tibber‘s virtual power plant. In the end the market determines, how much money Tibber can effectively earn and distribute.

[@ChristianBorchgrevinkVigeland]

Nope.

[@Gh0stHack3r.]

Most electric cars do not have VTG support so tibber is still in LA LA Land... They are losing customers and are trying to lure them back, most will drop again when they see tibber only want their money not help or deliver good functions..

[@Yggdrasil42]

Even without VTG they can still use Grid Rewards to reduce peaks. I've had it for two months now and it's worked well. Bjørn's estimate of about €10 per month is accurate. And that's on top of the reduced kWh price during the session. I don't understand why you're so negative. Why would this be bad for me as a customer?

[@tridruankham2657]

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