Azienda Multiservizi Bellinzona (AMB), the public utilities company in the capital city of Ticino, has just launched a new opt-in tariff scheme for households based on the Smart Pricer system developed by Hive Power, a startup catering to energy utilities and smart grids headquartered in Manno, near Lugano. This is the first time in Switzerland that a distribution system operator offers consumers flexible dynamic tariffs by adopting a demand-side management approach.
Smart meters, smart grids, renewables, peak shaving, dynamic/algorithmic pricing… the transition towards sustainable energy production and consumption is fueling a wide range of innovative solutions to reach, among other things, the objectives set by the Energy Strategy 2050 of the Federal Council. So far, only large industrial consumers could benefit from wholesale energy prices and the flexibility of the open market. Now, it’s time for the consumers to play the game – not by choosing where to buy the electricity they need, but when to buy it.
Households in Switzerland have always had little choice when it comes to consuming electricity: either you’d pay the higher daytime rate, or the lower nighttime rate. Zero flexibility, therefore. As of this year, AMB – the city-owned distribution system operator in Bellinzona – will start offering its customers a new tariff scheme with the intention of optimising its consumption profile by lowering the peaks by creating high and low tariffs that vary on a daily basis, depending on factors such as rainfall, temperatures, own production and consumption. This action – the first of its kind in the country – is part of the energy-environmental policy of the city capital of Ticino that aims at pursuing the objectives of the federal Energy Strategy 2050 and to realise the vision of "Smart-City-Bellinzona".
The peculiarity of this new opt-in tariff model is that it is, as its name suggests, dynamic and varies the high and low tariff bands from day to day. Thanks to this tariff, customers can monitor consumption and adapt their habits in order to reduce electricity bill costs. The dynamic tariff is suitable for all households up to 60 A equipped with a smart meter and in particular for all those who have the possibility to shift consumption within the day.
Behind all of this we find Hive Power, a spin-off of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) specialising in innovative solutions for energy utilities and smart grids. Hive Power was founded in 2017 and has been named among the Top 100 start-ups in 2019 for energy transition by the German Energy Agency.
Solution with demand-side approach
The solution provided by the Lugano-based company is called Smart Pricer, a SaaS that uses a stochastic optimisation method to enable peak shaving – a demand-side management approach which allows DSOs to reduce demand for electricity during peak usage times. The consumer who decides to opt-in to the dynamic pricing scheme of AMB will receive the high and low fare times of the following day before noon. Communication also takes place via the app and the AMB customer portal. In addition, as a support to monitor this new tariff, a device, a "traffic light" based on IoT (Internet of Things) technology, has been created by partner company Gimasi to indicate in real time the current tariff in force (green = low / red = high). The high and low rate bands have a minimum duration of 3 consecutive hours.
“This is the ideal time to introduce this kind of solution, especially if you consider the strong customer demand for electric vehicles or heat pumps – which typically require lots of electricity. Moreover, in the future these solutions will be key to enabling efficient production and consumption of renewables, mainly wind and solar power”, says Gianluca Corbellini, CEO and co-founder of Hive Power.
At AMB, it has been estimated that the citizens who decide to consume electricity in the low tariff brackets will manage to save several francs on their bill, with savings that could range from CHF 50 to CHF 200 per year. According to Mauro Suà, Managing Director at AMB, “the introduction of the dynamic tariff is a concrete and simple means that allows us to make the customer responsible for a sustainable energy consumption also in view of the strong development of electromobility expected in the coming years”.
Information in Italian can be found in the official press release.
Picture: Pete Linforth / Pixabay
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