Tibber launches virtual power plant in Sweden, the Netherlands

Tibber, an energy company active in the Scandinavian market, has launched a virtual power plant (VPP) service for residential battery owners in Sweden and the Netherlands to receive compensation for the energy their batteries feed into the grid.

The service, called Grid Rewards, is being offered by Tibber for Swedish and Dutch owners of the company’s Homevolt Home Battery. To begin earning money, they need to connect the charging cable to their electric vehicle or put their Homevolt battery in ‘optimized for revenue’ mode.

The service automatically charges the electric vehicle or home battery at a time when energy prices are low, so customers can save money. When they activate Grid Rewards they can make money on the surplus energy they sell back to the grid. The exact savings customers can make depends on their consumption and where they are based. Tibber offers earnings calculators for both the Swedish and Dutch markets.

According to a blog post on Tibber’s website, charging costs are not set on the day-ahead market but instead are determined on the real time energy markets “in which short term, grid friendly actions are compensated.”

The Grid Rewards scheme is designed so a customer’s final costs should always be lower than they would have been with smart charging alone, the post added.

Any credits customers earn are saved in their account on the company’s app and applied to their energy bill, according to Tibber. It recommends customers switch their batteries to ‘optimized for revenue’ mode as ‘self-consumption mode’ does not generate significant earnings.

Headquartered in Norway, Tibber is active in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. It claims to be “a pretty different digital energy company with an ongoing dream of making the electricity market better and smarter.”