Comment by londons_explore
16 hours ago
In a future with solar and batteries, daytime and nighttime electricity pricing cannot be equal - else nobody would bother to have a battery (grid scale or at home).
Rules and regulations could solve that problem (meter not allowed to go backwards, solar companies are forced to pay some kind of battery credit, etc), but the free market will always outcompete.
Therefore, I forsee the future lies in 'smart' electricity meters which can charge different rates at different times of day - perhaps with minute by minute live pricing.
We already do this. Charging different rates for different times of day.
It’s called TOU pricing.
Here in Ireland, night-time power prices are much lower than daytime.
I’m happy enough that a battery will serve me equally well in both modes, but there’s definitely going to be a period where all it does is support self-consumption.
And then a storm hits texas and without realizing it you run up a $30,000 electricity bill in a single night of not freezing.
This only happens if a small percentage of people have live pricing. If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes - for example by turning the heating off in unused rooms to save money.
In turn, that means that at times of crisis, prices will be high, but not 1000x high.
Gasoline is another resource with live pricing, and suggesting "I want a subscription where I pay $3 per gallon fixed for a year, no matter how much I use and no matter what happens to the price of oil" wouldn't be something a fuel station would entertain, because they know that when the price was under $3 you'd buy elsewhere, and when the price was over $3 you'd buy millions of gallons and resell at a profit.
> If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes
It's not latency free to act on price changes. If they spike while people are asleep, what do you expect would happen? And would people get a notification everytime the price changed at all. The logistics are hard.
4 replies →
The whole gimmick with that supplier was that they exposed their customers more or less directly to grid pricing. You don't need to do that to charge different prices during different parts of the day.
My (very-)local utility will give you an overall rate discount if you send them a screen shot of your car charging app showing it's only charging in a certain range of hours. Surprisingly, this works fine, though supposedly they've got eventual integration plans, "nah, we'll trust you for now" is a viable MVP...
The post I was responding to said
> I forsee the future lies in 'smart' electricity meters which can charge different rates at different times of day - perhaps with minute by minute live pricing.
That's what I was responding to, not the day/night predetermined pricing.
1 reply →
TX is its own energy grid so - that’s what you get for being “The Lone Star”
Seriously though this was a huge issue a couple years ago with the freezing and blizzards that hit Texas.
[dead]