3 ms·
This is all nice and well, though I'd like to add the thought that this is much easier to do on industry scale. Have one large industrial factory like an alumi
by hannob 6y ago
This is all nice and well, though I'd like to add the thought that this is much easier to do on industry scale.
Have one large industrial factory like an aluminium smelter or steel plant that is redesigned in a way that it can shift its electricity use a little bit? That's probably having an effect larger than a lot of personal users.
I guess there's a political issue here, as industry often pays very little for electricity to begin with. I know at lesat in Germany most large industries are excluded from a lot of fees that normal customers pay. Providing "cheap and reliable electricity" to industry is often almost a political mantra.
I guess it would make sense to say at some point: "Dear industry, you can have cheap electricity, you can have reliable electricity, but you can't have both. If you want to have it cheap you have to support the grid by providing flexibility."
- bboreham 6y agoThis exists already. https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/business-energy/virtual-power-plant https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/business-energy/virtual-power-p...
- makomk 6y agoProviding cheap and reliable electricity to industry is basically a prerequisite to having industry in the first place, which is why it's so politically important in countries which still care about that. Aluminium smelters, being particularly sensitive to electricity cost, are somewhat willing to choose their location and reduce their power usage briefly if it gives them really, really cheap power, but I think even those still need to be running most of the time.
- Nasrudith 6y agoFrom what I heard there are reasons for both. Industrial electrical users are required to engage in their own impedience matching, demand regularion and other such contractual issues in addition to the ammount of other expenses for say 100MW to N consumer homes being greater than one connection to a widget factory. It isn't some mustache twirling plot to make the consumer pay more while some abstract industrial fat cat pays more or anything - real economics are at play. The prevailing obvious alternative to competitive pricing that tries to roll in other expenses would be direct generation by industrial scales running their own fossil fuel turbines or direct thermal alternatives. Which result in worse performance at scale from everyone mid-sized and up rolling their own separate systems and worse pollution control as instead of having four great smokestacks to put scrubbers on and regulate there are now four thousand small ones. Economies of scale have been here for centuries. Aluminum smelters and steel plants while they may use a lot of power also cannot be just neglected and cut off mid-cycle without wasting a very large batch slag in a way that is very expensive to clean up.