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How the Solar Manager distributes solar power throughout the house
by Martin Jungfer
A different price every 15 minutes: I’m buzzing to try out these new electricity tariffs
15/1/2026
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
It’s rare that bills excite me, but I can’t wait to see how much we’ll be charged for electricity this month. Why? Because our local network provider introduced a dynamic tariff option at the beginning of this year. But I have some questions before I sign up for that.
The days of simple peak and off-peak tariffs are over. The future belongs to dynamic pricing. In other words, the cost of each kilowatt hour you need to run your washing machine, TV or electric car constantly changes. The price is based on how much electricity’s available to the grid operator at that very moment and how much is being used elsewhere. Put simply, it’s supply and demand that determine the price. A price that changes daily, every 15 minutes.
Electricity marketplaces for electricity trading aren’t a new thing. Both in Switzerland (page in German) and Europe, it’s where the prices that energy suppliers need to pay producers are determined and announced in 15-minute intervals. So far, this isn’t something the majority of consumers would’ve picked up on.
Gradually, however, electricity suppliers are now offering customers a dynamic tariff (page in German). One key reason being that the transition to renewable energy puts stress on the existing grids from the nuclear age. So if the sun’s shining throughout Switzerland and the 300,000 plus registered solar systems are producing large amounts of electricity, this pushes the grid to its limits. At the same time, there’s been a rise in new, energy-hungry devices including electric cars with batteries that can typically hold 50 kWh or more.
Politicians and grid operators want households to behave in a grid-friendly manner, as this reduces the costs of the energy transition. A good incentive for customers to do this is dynamic tariffs. To use the above example of a sunny day in Switzerland: when electricity production from photovoltaic systems is running at full speed, the price per kilowatt hour drops. In other words, that’s when you should be charging the rechargeable battery in your electric car. The more people do this, the lower the peak load on the grid. And that’s the decisive factor for the costs of grid expansion.
Self-consumption is key
This time, I wasn’t a first mover. In the busy run up to Christmas, I simply forgot to register with Zurich’s electricity provider EKZ for the new tariff (page in German). The good news is that you can also switch retroactively. EKZ then checks whether you meet the conditions and hooks up your home to the new tariff if you do.
In the case of our home, everything should be fine. There’s an energy-producing PV system on the roof and a smart meter in the house that transmits the electricity consumption digitally to EKZ. We also have a large-scale consumer with our electric car. And most importantly: I’ve installed an energy management system (EMS).
The Solar Manager, which is the name of my EMS, shows how much electricity the PV system is supplying at any given time and how much is being consumed in the house or sold to EKZ. It primarily controls which consumers are using electricity at what time. For example, (/page/dieser-kleine-kasten-soll-den-solarstromverbrauch-optimieren-32928) [when the heat pump and boiler are providing hot water]. You can also use the Solar Manager to define how your electric car should be fuelled. For example, that it should exclusively be charged with self-produced solar power. Or, if the sun’s not shining brightly enough, that it should fill up on low-rate electricity up to a 60 per cent charge by the following morning.
We’ve set our Solar Manager so that we consume as much of the electricity produced by our PV system as possible. So what to expect if the electricity price changes every quarter of an hour in future? I wanted to hear this from Hans Fischer, the inventor of the Solar Manager (page in German), who gave me some me reassuring answers.
Hello Hans, I’m about to sign the application for EKZ to supply our home with dynamic tariff electricity future. Should I really do it?
Hans Fischer: You’re a bit on the late side. For people with PV systems, the dynamic tariff is particularly interesting between late autumn and early spring. That’s when less electricity is produced on roofs, and when an EMS, for example our Solar Manager, can fully exploit its advantages.
Such as?** It’s simple: buying electricity when it’s cheaper. Sometimes it’s also worth filling a battery storage system when electricity’s particularly cheap.
Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of system. Would you still advise me to go for the dynamic tariff?
Yes, it’s worth it, even without a battery storage system. Let’s say you have an electric car and want it fully charged by the morning. All you need to do is plug it into the wall box in the evening and the EMS will find the cheapest time slots for charging. The same applies to heat pumps. In fact, you’re even more flexible with the pumps, because you don’t unplug or drive off in them.
But the Solar Manager needs to know the prices in advance for this to work.
That’s right and it does. The electricity provider publishes the prices for the 15-minute intervals one day in advance. This allows the Solar Manager to plan ahead.
Would I have to change my consumption in any way if I hooked up our home to the dynamic tariff?
No, I don’t think you should start thinking in 15-minute intervals. Put simply, a dynamic electricity tariff is designed by machines for machines. The EMS analyses at the tariffs and strategically plans consumption. If there’s something it can tweak, it does. In any case, it’s worth turning on appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers that aren’t connected to the EMS during a sunny midday.
I also asked Hans Fischer how much I can potentially save on my electricity bill. He tells me it’ll probably go down, provided I don’t go completely overboard. For example, by telling the Solar Manager to charge the electric car when the electricity price is at its highest. Not that I’d do that. But how much I would be saving depends on many factors. Forecasts are difficult to make, he tells me. In Germany, where dynamic tariffs have been around for a while, the electricity bills are slashed by up to 40 per cent for customers whose storage, heat pumps, and electric cars work together smartly.
The Solar Manager app will keep me updated here in Switzerland. There’s a widget that displays savings in real time based on consumption and tariff data.
Source: Solar Manager
Is it worth putting a battery storage system in the cellar?
At the beginning of the year, EKZ reduced its guaranteed feed-in tariff (page in German). Put simply, this means you’re likely to get significantly less for every kilowatt hour produced by the PV system that you don’t consume in your own home. To date, you were looking at 15 cents. Now, you’re only guaranteed six cents. Again, the market will play a role in the future and add a dynamic aspect to the income you make. For the time being there’s one price per quarter. In summer, when the sun shines often and for a long time, I’ll hardly be making anything with the electricity I feed into the grid. In winter, however, it might be more. Politicians are currently discussing if the electricity fed into the grid by private consumers and companies should also be made even more dynamic, meaning that different reimbursements will apply every quarter of an hour.
But we’re not there yet. Even so, I’m wondering if I should buy a battery storage system. After all, large corporations are currently investing a lot of money in large storage facilities because they’ve understood that electricity has become a tradable good. This is why a 100-megawatt-hour facility’s being created in Gurtnellen, where, between 2028 and 2030, Swissgrid and BKW could put large batteries into operation with a total capacity of over 1600 megawatt-hours. Feasibility studies are currently in progress (pages in German).
Unfortunately, I have neither the space for that kind of system in my cellar or garden. Household batteries usually have a capacity of between five and 20 kilowatt hours and fit on a wall in your garage or cellar.
Although acquisition prices have recently fallen sharply, storage systems are by no means a no-brainer when it comes to amortising their price. The installation also costs quite a bit, and after about 15 years, a lithium-ion storage reaches the end of its lifespan. The easiest option right now is to retrofit with a house battery. Why? Because you can simply plug it into the socket and let the Solar Manager do the work.
I’ll give the dynamic tariff a go for a few months. That way, I should have enough data to create a proper amortisation calculation.
Martin Jungfer
Head of Content
Martin.Jungfer@digitecgalaxus.chJournalist since 1997. Stopovers in Franconia (or the Franken region), Lake Constance, Obwalden, Nidwalden and Zurich. Father since 2014. Expert in editorial organisation and motivation. Focus on sustainability, home office tools, beautiful things for the home, creative toys and sports equipment.
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