Comment by amluto

Is it? There’s not nearly enough information to tell.

Austin Energy appears to charge about 10 cents/kWh (interestingly, it’s comparable across all service classes if I read the tariff sheet right). They pay up to $80/kW saved on average (across all events, I think) [0], I think annually. The webpage is vague. So Austin Energy is effectively paying $80/kW/year of capacity available on 10 minutes notice.

1 kW for a whole year is 8766 kWh, which would cost about $876. And you need to actually be using that kW to resell it as average demand response, so this program is about a 10% discount for being willing to shut down on 10 minutes notice. Or alternatively, you get 10% off in exchange for reducing your SLA a bit :)

Hate bitcoin miners all you like, but the actual payment seems quite reasonable.

[0] https://savings.austinenergy.com/commercial/offerings/load-m...