Comment by aeonfox

> So you can have three hours of free electricity, while you’re at work, the kids are at school, you’re renting so no battery for you

Probably not useful for cooking dinner or watching the evening news, but most dishwashers and clothes washers have a delay start option. Your fridge is also working its hardest during the middle of the day.

> and now you’re being offered something your 10 year old second hand appliances and petrol cars can’t take advantage of.

A washer/dryer combo would be useful for delayed start. But as mentioned, delay start has been a common option for a long time now.

> We should be sitting down trying to work out how we can use more power next month, in order to leverage that power to have a better life, warmer / cooler homes. Starting businesses and not having electricity be the killer.

BESS are the deluge up you're asking for. Much of the stress on the grid is that power generation is distributed unevenly. Grid scale battery prices have been crashing stupidly year on year, to the tune of about 20-40%, and those effects are only just starting to hit the consumer market. The uptake curve has been reasonably steady, and at current projections we would have 24 hours of world-wide storage by 2035. Which is nuts!

I think this is sensible policy. It ought to reduce power prices across the board. At the very least, energy companies would have few excuses to hide behind if prices don't become more competitive.

Another sensible policy to help renters would be to force landlords and owners' corps to put timers on their electric hot water systems. It's a kind of energy storage that most people don't consider.