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A coworker recently showed me that they have a non commercial power plan/contract where they get hourly prices based on market rate. In South Australia where th

A coworker recently showed me that they have a non commercial power plan/contract where they get hourly prices based on market rate. In South Australia where the sun is pretty intense, his power prices literally go negative for a few hours. Now if you had variable loads or a battery you could schedule them to buy and sell power based on the market rate. Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can constantly beat the market on an almost daily basis. Tesla in fact already does this. Not only do they profit from this buying and selling, the grid becomes stabilized because the high and low demand periods become smoothed.

imtringued 6y ago
>Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can constantly beat the market on an almost daily basis. That's incorrect usage of terminology because energy is not an investment. Nobody buys a kWh of energy expecting it to net a return year over year. It's used as a consumable like food or water. If you buy low and sell high you are engaging in trading, not investment. Trading is about providing liquidity and the maximum liquidity a market needs depends on its size, not the number of traders. Those traders basically have to share a market and if there are too many traders then the profit per trader will go down. This is the biggest reason why trading (not investment) is zero sum. At some point enough is enough but this isn't necessarily as bad as many people portray. A lot of industries are like this. Once everyone got a smartphone or PC the only way to grow faster is to displace a competitor. Trading in the stock market is usually a poor choice because there are plenty of professional businesses that are already providing enough liquidity. Trading in the energy market can be a good choice precisely because the market isn't crowded as you said.
- leoedin 6y ago
  The scale of the required liquidity of the energy market is growing constantly. Every time a solar panel or wind turbine is installed, the need for variable power sources goes up. If we're going to go anywhere near the net zero target that many western nations have set, we're going to need _a lot_ of liquidity.
gwbas1c 6y ago
I believe that Tesla could hook my power wall into such a system if my local utilities offered it. Hopefully they do soon, because there's going to be major offshore windmills near my house soon.

imtringued 6y ago

>Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can constantly beat the market on an almost daily basis. That's incorrect usage of terminology because energy is not an investment. Nobody buys a kWh of energy expecting it to net a return year over year. It's used as a consumable like food or water. If you buy low and sell high you are engaging in trading, not investment. Trading is about providing liquidity and the maximum liquidity a market needs depends on its size, not the number of traders. Those traders basically have to share a market and if there are too many traders then the profit per trader will go down. This is the biggest reason why trading (not investment) is zero sum. At some point enough is enough but this isn't necessarily as bad as many people portray. A lot of industries are like this. Once everyone got a smartphone or PC the only way to grow faster is to displace a competitor. Trading in the stock market is usually a poor choice because there are plenty of professional businesses that are already providing enough liquidity. Trading in the energy market can be a good choice precisely because the market isn't crowded as you said.

leoedin 6y ago
The scale of the required liquidity of the energy market is growing constantly. Every time a solar panel or wind turbine is installed, the need for variable power sources goes up. If we're going to go anywhere near the net zero target that many western nations have set, we're going to need _a lot_ of liquidity.

gwbas1c 6y ago

I believe that Tesla could hook my power wall into such a system if my local utilities offered it. Hopefully they do soon, because there's going to be major offshore windmills near my house soon.