cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/127188
Have you ever heard of “net metering”?
It means that if your electric company gives you net metering, you can connect a generator or solar panels to your house and sell excess electricity back to the utility at the same price that they bill you for.
Sounds great right?
No, actually its a major problem for the utility.
The reason is that power plants take a significant amount of time to throttle up or down. If everyone in the area has solar power feeding back into the power grid, sudden changes in sunlight can cause major fluctuations and destabilize the power grid.
So what is the solution?
Dynamic pricing. Some areas already do this. How it works is that the price you pay (or receive) for electricity depends on the conditions on the power grid at the moment, updating as fast as possible.
When the grid has a deficit of power at the moment (maybe a power plant is struggling to throttle up to meet demand) the price goes way up.
If the grid has a surplus power at the moment, the price goes down, even going negative.(meaning you must pay to dump your power into the grid, or be paid for consuming excess power)
What this does is create an economic incentive for people to invest in equipment that actually stabilizes and supports the power grid.
For example if you have an electric car charging in your garage, it knows the price of power, and it can start charging faster when the price drops, or it can dump its battery power back into the grid when the price is high. The battery in your car is actually earning money as it sits idle!
Same with solar panels. Even if the installation doesn’t have batteries, the system can choose to stop selling power to the grid when it isn’t wanted.
Likewise, your heated pool can choose to absorb electricity when the price is low.
This is the future of the renewable energy economy in my opinion.
“When the grid has a deficit of power at the moment (maybe a power plant is struggling to throttle up to meet demand) the price goes way up.”
The whole concept is definitely intriguing, but I worry that this would disproportionately create negative conditions for the poor. Rich people would hardly notice… I’m talking about people who have money falling out their pockets and suck up electricity all day and all night powering their high-end lifestyles versus people who live paycheck to paycheck. I hate to think of even MORE people having to decide between buying groceries and gas versus paying the electric bill. It could conceivably damage entire communities, unless I’m missing something (which is entirely possible, lol, I’m not very smart).
The energy company I’m with in the UK offers this type of dynamic pricing. I’m not on that tariff, but the setup is a great idea.
The pitch is that they give you notice , sometimes half hour sometimes more, of price shifts. Then you can chose to maybe do you laundry later or sooner depending what’s going to be better. One of their use cases is even to have a rig where an electric car battery can supply energy to the house. You charge your car when power is cheap / free, run your home from the car’s battery when it gets high.
They even have an API that some people use to automate tasks to take advantage of the price shifts.
Done well it’s excellent, but definitely needs an ethical mindset behind it. Fortunately in the UK, Octopus Energy is nothing if not ethical, but they are very much notable by this difference!
Thats great, but the pricing needs to be faster. 1 second updates or faster
I disagree. You need dynamic pricing but it needs to be manageable. Let’s say you start a cycle on the washing machine then a few minutes in the price suddenly jumps to an extreme high - that’s not manageable.
Giving users some warning throughout the day of price shifts actually meets the point of dynamic pricing better, too. The point is to get more power used when there is excess and less when supply is struggling. That doesn’t happen if people don’t get the chance to plan, even if that planning is only 30 minutes notice.
Every appliance will be controlled by the grid pricing. This isnt even a technical challenge, you can already walk into home depot and buy an internet connected “smart” dryer that will reorder fabric softener from amazon when you run out. A bit of reprogramming, and it can intelligently moderate its energy usage accordingly with the grid pricing. Price spike? Turn off the heating element and wait a few seconds until conditions improve.
This is the action that stabilizes (and lowers) the grid price. Every single thing thats consuming or generating electricity can respond in real time to keep the power grip functioning perfectly.
Growing pains. The more efficient the power grid becomes, the less energy will cost for everyone. For now lets say that customers who want to install equipment that earns profit must agree to subsidize low income customers. As time goes on and the distributed systems mature, the price of bulk energy becomes so low that it doesn’t matter anymore.
Better pricing will make electricity cheaper for everyone.
I think a better solution is to add this as an option for the power providers we have now. Allow those who want to min/max their energy bills (and have the equipment for it) do so as an opt-in. Poor people who cannot afford the new equipment can still opt-in and only use electricity for times when it is cheap. People who don’t care and don’t have automation doing the work for them can live life just like they would have, with set rates for their electricity.
Many technologies and other societal changes can create disproportionately negative conditions for the poor. For example not having a phone, not having a car, not having Internet access. Please do not blame the technology. Blame inequality instead.