Balance is a subscription in the tado° app that steers your heat pump to heat at the cheapest times of the day. Balance takes into account your electricity tariff and the outdoor temperature to optimize the use of your heat pump.
To benefit from Balance, you need the following:
a compatible air-to-water, water-to-water, or ground-to-water hydronic heat pump
a tado° Heat Pump Optimizer X
How Balance controls heat pumps
Based on your set schedule, electricity tariff, and local weather forecast, Balance will:
maintain your usual hot water temperature range
reduce costs by starting heating cycles at earlier, cheaper times
reduce costs by stopping expensive heating cycles at slightly lower temperatures
set your room heating to standby for the two most expensive hours in your schedule
Balance always aims to maintain your specified temperature range, but if you ever feel cold while Balance delays a heating cycle, you can pause Balance to resume your usual schedule for the day.
How Balance works in the tado° app
Once you activate your Balance subscription, you can select Balance in the tado° app Home Screen to display a daily optimization report of how energy prices will fluctuate and how your heat pump will respond.
Note that the Hot Water option will only appear if your heat pump controls domestic hot water.
The daily optimization report will indicate when your heat pump preheats or is in energy-saving mode. Note that Balance won’t necessarily guide your heat pump into these modes at the same times every day, since it is responsive to changes in energy demands and pricing.
You can access your overall heat pump consumption data in Energy IQ.
Setting Up Balance
After activating Balance, you’ll need to provide details of your electricity tariff.
Balance is compatible with:
Flat tariffs: the electricity price is constant. For flat tariffs, the setting Optimize Based on Outdoor Temperature is always enabled to allow Balance to shift water and space heating to when there is more heat available outdoors.
Time of Use tariffs: the electricity price follows a fixed daily or weekly schedule.
Dynamic tariffs: the electricity price follows electricity market prices, and changes either hourly or half-hourly. Balance is currently able to retrieve day-ahead electricity market prices for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
You can access the Balance settings by selecting the Balance tile on the Home Screen in the tado° app.
In Balance settings, you can:
activate/deactivate Balance for your heating and hot water, which are toggled ON by default
choose how often Balance intervenes per day (min. 1 hour, max. 6 hours). You can use the slider to focus more on Comfort or Savings. The default setting is 2 hours of daily Balance intervention.
activate/deactivate Optimize Based on Outdoor Temperature. When enabled, Balance factors a forecast of the outdoor temperature into its calculations. This feature should only be activated for air-source heat pumps.
update your electricity tariff details.