tado°’s latest home energy management solution gets the maximum value out of free energy

Berlin, 04.09.2024 – tado°, the European leader in home energy management solutions, today unveils its new PV forecasting services for heat pumps and electric vehicles to extract the maximum value out of the free electricity generated by a home’s solar panels — without owners having to lift a finger.

tado°’s Balance for Heat Pumps service and its Smart Charging App are now both able to predict the amount of electricity a home’s solar panels will produce the following day and then ensure, respectively, that the heat pump operates or EV charges during those hours to make the best use of the free electricity being generated.

Both services rely on weather forecasts localized to the home’s location, along with details of their PV system. All homeowners have to do is enter the relevant information when they set up their system and tado° automatically does the rest – every day.

It is another crucial plank of tado°’s vision for inter-connected and more sustainable home energy management systems that smartly reduce electricity consumption from the grid, drive forward the green energy transition and cut bills for millions of families across Europe.

About 50 per cent of heat pump owners in Germany and 45 per cent in the UK also have PV systems so the benefit of using the free electricity created by solar panels is obvious, said tado° Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Christian Deilmann.

“Our PV forecasting takes the free energy from your roof at the time it comes from your roof to operate your heat pump or charge your EV because these are amongst the most energy-hungry devices in a home,” said Mr Deilmann. “This has been one of the strongest requests from our customers to develop because it really maximizes the value of the free electricity they are generating. Being smarter about when their heat pump operates or EV is charging reduces the amount of energy they are paying for from the grid.”

How it works

Both systems start with the owner entering details of their PV system, including its peak generation capacity, address, direction and roof tilt. Each day tado° then checks what the local weather forecast will be and estimates the amount of electricity and the time it will be generated and adjusts the schedule for the heat pump operation through the tado° Heat Pump Optimizer X and the Balance for Heat Pumps subscription service, or Smart Charging App for EVs.

The result is a more efficient use of ‘homegrown’ sustainable energy plus savings not only on the cost of electricity but also grid fees in countries such as Germany.

tado° estimates its forecasts are up to 80 per cent accurate and development work is continuing to make this even more powerful for customers. If there is no sunshine, the heat pump or EV charger will revert to the normal scheduling system the owner has in place.

PV forecasting is in addition to the optimization and smart scheduling both Balance for Heat Pumps and the Smart Charging App already offer, where a homeowner’s electricity tariff (and outside temperature for Balance) is analyzed and a heat pump’s operations or the charging of an EV is automatically adjusted to the cheapest times of the day. 

Mr Deilmann said: “tado° has made a commitment that through hardware and software improvements, the devices our customers buy today will only become more and more powerful in the future. Today’s announcements continue to deliver on that commitment. Each step we make on our roadmap progresses millions of homes along the path of the energy transition and reduces their energy consumption and costs without sacrificing on comfort.”

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About tado°

tado° is a leading European provider of intelligent home energy management solutions. Founded in Munich in 2011, the company offers households one simple, easy-to-use platform to control their energy consumption and significantly reduce costs while also driving the green energy transition. 

tado°’s hardware, software and services deliver simple and efficient home climate management and heat pump control, intelligent electric vehicle charging, and dynamic energy tariff integration on one platform. The objective is to offer for maximum comfort and savings while automatically shifting electricity consumption to the cheapest and greenest hours of the day.

tado° currently employs more than 200 people from 45 countries and is the only open platform to provide industry-leading compatibility. In 2022, tado° acquired aWATTar, a pioneer in the field of dynamic energy tariffs, as part of its vision to offer a complete yet simple home energy management solutions package that reshapes the way energy is consumed for more comfort, savings, and in sync with nature.

More information: tado.com