Energy automation

If you are one of the many people exporting electricity to the grid, chances are you are familiar with the following…

When you export electricity you also get to pay energy taxes and or other grid fees. So even if your net-consumption is zero, you still own taxes. This might not be the case in your country or your specific utilities provider, but it will be the future for most of us.

The graph above is a simplification of typical grid usage for a solar house over the course of 24 hours. At night we consume power from the grid, and at daytime we are exporting. Either way there is power crossing the meter which can potentially cost us money as taxes.

My electric water heater consumes a lot of electricity, and it does so at times when it is most expensive. This is because I have dynamic prices which change every hour and I shower at an expensive time. And even if a had a high&low tariff, the problem would still exist.

There is more than one way to solve this problem, and I prefer one that is technological in nature.