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There are huge electr. pumped storage hydro power stations in use in Austria und Switzerland for decades... http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpspeicherkraftwerk#

by holri 15y ago

There are huge electr. pumped storage hydro power stations in use in Austria und Switzerland for decades... http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpspeicherkraftwerk#.C3.96sterreich http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpspeicherkraftwerk#.C3.96ste... Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging. Also the weather forecast and therefore solar and wind energy producing forecast for the next 24 hours is very accurate nowadays. Far-sighted and intelligent planning of the energy-mix in the smart grid is therefore possible.

rmc 15y ago
Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging. Sounds terrible. Can you imagine half the lights in your house automatically turning off due to price increases? If it's enforced on people then it's basically rolling brownouts. If it's optional people will leave the lights on, pay more and grumble, but you'll still to generate the electricity (unless you do rolling brownouts).
- holri 15y ago
  My washing machine or dish washer is programmable at the moment. They often wash in the night. I don't mind when they are washing given them a target finishing time. My 2 thermal heat pumps for hot water and heating could easily take the price into their on/off calculations without any nuisance. They just store the heat energy in the house / water bowl when electric is cheap. If I am going to buy an electric car or a plug hybrid, I don't mind when it is charging, I just want that the batteries are full at 7 am. There is a lot of room for intelligence in our energy consumption. Owning my own battery buffer could also become profitable. The volatile wholesale price is there at the moment, what is missing is a volatile consumer price and an XML / JSON whatever webservice with the current price information and some WIFI chips and logic in my hardware. Not a big deal actually.

by holri 15y ago

rmc 15y ago

Also smart grids (trinding price due to current demand and consumption and intelligent consumer hardware automatically controlled by this price) are emerging. Sounds terrible. Can you imagine half the lights in your house automatically turning off due to price increases? If it's enforced on people then it's basically rolling brownouts. If it's optional people will leave the lights on, pay more and grumble, but you'll still to generate the electricity (unless you do rolling brownouts).

holri 15y ago
My washing machine or dish washer is programmable at the moment. They often wash in the night. I don't mind when they are washing given them a target finishing time. My 2 thermal heat pumps for hot water and heating could easily take the price into their on/off calculations without any nuisance. They just store the heat energy in the house / water bowl when electric is cheap. If I am going to buy an electric car or a plug hybrid, I don't mind when it is charging, I just want that the batteries are full at 7 am. There is a lot of room for intelligence in our energy consumption. Owning my own battery buffer could also become profitable. The volatile wholesale price is there at the moment, what is missing is a volatile consumer price and an XML / JSON whatever webservice with the current price information and some WIFI chips and logic in my hardware. Not a big deal actually.