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> batteries (both as scalable consumers and suppliers); widespread electric car usage might accidentally help her I've been in a some jurisdictions that have p

by krrrh 9y ago

> batteries (both as scalable consumers and suppliers); widespread electric car usage might accidentally help her I've been in a some jurisdictions that have periods of low water supply where you can't water your lawn or garden on certain days, or sometimes based on whether your house has an odd or even number. Imagine the same applied to fueling up your car. Not enough wind and sun this week, sorry you'll have to stretch out the capacity you put into your car last week. Obviously demand could be shaped with spot pricing, but it's interesting to imagine how rolling brownouts would affect mobility and transportation.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Restrictions like these have been used on electricity for roughly as long as they have on water. They're slightly different in that with electricity it's often the peak usage that they care about rather than total usage, but some people are ordered or paid to reduce usage at certain times where this is considered cheaper/better than building a coal plant that's only used 1 day a year. Due to the nature of modern electricity generation, electric car batteries will help the grid rather than harm it, as they can be (and are) set to use off-peak power to avoid increasing the peaks, while getting best usage of the grid at other times.
- eru 9y ago
  Yes, demand shaping is already done for some big consumers of electricity. It would be a new development to eg have my fridge defer its cooling for five minutes (or do some cooling earlier) in response to the spot market.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    That already happens for commercial fridges and freezers, farm water pumps and for home A/C and EV charging. As it becomes more widespread it can be done more cheaply and be extended to lower power devices like home refrigerators where there is less bang per buck. Microsoft is involved in a project called Watttime that provides an API for this for use by the IoT: https://api.watttime.org/ https://api.watttime.org/
usrusr 9y ago
Rolling brownouts (or even/odd licence plate rules and the like) only encourage inefficient stockpiling. People buying the bigger battery option when purchasing an EV (which is dead weight when not needed), degrading their batteries faster than necessary by putting their Tesla on max range charge mode all the time, because what if, and so on. I'd say spot prices for everyone or a reliable fixed rate model, everything in between will turn into a negative-sum game. Exceptions only where discrete consumers are so big that their paid shutdown can be individually supervised and verified (aluminium smelters, ice storage cooling for datacenters and the like). You clearly would not want those to simply switch over to a fixed rate outlet behind your back in times of scarcity, they need to be verifiably off.
- eru 9y ago
  > You clearly would not want those to simply switch over to a fixed rate outlet behind your back in times of scarcity, they need to be verifiably off. The fixed rate outlet would be quite expensive in that case, wouldn't it be?

by krrrh 9y ago

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

Restrictions like these have been used on electricity for roughly as long as they have on water. They're slightly different in that with electricity it's often the peak usage that they care about rather than total usage, but some people are ordered or paid to reduce usage at certain times where this is considered cheaper/better than building a coal plant that's only used 1 day a year. Due to the nature of modern electricity generation, electric car batteries will help the grid rather than harm it, as they can be (and are) set to use off-peak power to avoid increasing the peaks, while getting best usage of the grid at other times.

eru 9y ago
Yes, demand shaping is already done for some big consumers of electricity. It would be a new development to eg have my fridge defer its cooling for five minutes (or do some cooling earlier) in response to the spot market.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  That already happens for commercial fridges and freezers, farm water pumps and for home A/C and EV charging. As it becomes more widespread it can be done more cheaply and be extended to lower power devices like home refrigerators where there is less bang per buck. Microsoft is involved in a project called Watttime that provides an API for this for use by the IoT: https://api.watttime.org/ https://api.watttime.org/

usrusr 9y ago

Rolling brownouts (or even/odd licence plate rules and the like) only encourage inefficient stockpiling. People buying the bigger battery option when purchasing an EV (which is dead weight when not needed), degrading their batteries faster than necessary by putting their Tesla on max range charge mode all the time, because what if, and so on. I'd say spot prices for everyone or a reliable fixed rate model, everything in between will turn into a negative-sum game. Exceptions only where discrete consumers are so big that their paid shutdown can be individually supervised and verified (aluminium smelters, ice storage cooling for datacenters and the like). You clearly would not want those to simply switch over to a fixed rate outlet behind your back in times of scarcity, they need to be verifiably off.

eru 9y ago
> You clearly would not want those to simply switch over to a fixed rate outlet behind your back in times of scarcity, they need to be verifiably off. The fixed rate outlet would be quite expensive in that case, wouldn't it be?