6 ms·

time-of-use is also cognitive load that can cause anxiety

zbrozek 4y ago
Yeah it is. I hate having to have a process in my brain thinking about optimizing everything. So I bought solar panels and batteries. Now I no longer care. The grid can keep getting more expensive and less reliable without causing me grief.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  >So I bought solar panels and batteries ...Mission accomplished?
  - sulam 4y ago
    "Profit"
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    Sortof? The chumps left behind have fewer people to help amortize fixed costs.
    - landemva 4y ago
      Hawaiian islands have struggled with this for a decade. Rich people put up solar cells with usage offsets and get grid scale reliability on the backs of those who can't put up solar cells due to being poor or living in an apartment.
      - zbrozek 4y ago
        I'm going a step further. No grid connection at all. Uptime isn't great anyway-about 87% in July in my neighborhood.
landemva 4y ago
For the small amount I consume, tiny potential savings are not worth the mental hassles. I switched a residence to flat rate to avoid these mental games.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  My house uses around 3-4MW/mo. I hyper optimized when I had true spot pricing before Griddy energy was disbanded by the state. My bill was extremely low compared to what I pay now.
  - khuey 4y ago
    Average US residential consumption is under 1MWh/mo so you are definitely not a typical customer.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    What? My house used 4 MWh a year in 2020, with two people working from home and two kids. Of these about half (IIRC) is self-produced solar. Stove and heating are gas and I do not have a tumble dryer, but does that justify a 10x difference??
    - vel0city 4y ago
      My home uses over 2MWh/mo over the summer, I think our peak bill this year was ~3200kWh. Average highs these last few months has been around 100F or so and very sunny, with at least one month >100F for the high every day. Its finally "cooling off" around here, with our highs being in the upper 90s most days. Cooling >2000sqft of space, even with some decent insulation and keeping the AC to 78F in the day, uses a lot of energy. It uses ~30A @ 240V, so ~7.2kW. If it had to run 12 hours in a day, that's 86.4kWh in just a single day. Doing that for a month straight, that's 2,592kWh. I was going to write up the math on how much my pool pump uses, but honestly it kind of turned into peanuts compared to the amount our AC usage is. The pump is 3/4HP. Running ~600W on the schedule of 8 hours a day + 12 hour once a week shock it really only worked out to 172.8kWh/mo of usage. Still though, that's 52% of your entire usage for just my pool. Last year we probably used ~3,000kWh charging the EV. That's on average 250kWh/mo.
notatoad 4y ago
it is, but that's the part that technology can actually help us with. all the internet-connected smart home stuff that companies have been trying to sell us is a bit silly when electricity is sold at a flat rate, but if my car charger, my clothes dryer, or my or my dishwasher could sit idle until electricity prices drop into the cheap zone and then turn themselves on, that internet connection becomes useful. an attitude of "i don't want to deal with the stress of thinking about the electricity i use" is absolutely the sort of luxury that you should pay extra for, the people willing to schedule their power usage to reduce peak demand should be paying less than the people who aren't willing to do that.
- AceyMan 4y ago
  this just makes me think of the situation that resulted in Global TCP Synchronization flapping problem; when everyone is operating on the same premise without some random delay or other way to 'shard' the load it seems like a Slashdot effect is bound to happen.
  - mirchiseth 4y ago
    Saw the Slashdot effect reference after such a long time. Not sure what % of HNers were there in the heydays of /.
    - jeffreygoesto 4y ago
      More than you think? =;-{)} Wo remembers the "Anonymous FTP Sites List"?
      - fsckboy 4y ago
        https://old.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/ https://old.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    You are comparing a complex, out of band, auction-based organization system with a simple, no added overhead, parameter-guessing system. Those don't fail on the same ways.

Yeah it is. I hate having to have a process in my brain thinking about optimizing everything. So I bought solar panels and batteries. Now I no longer care. The grid can keep getting more expensive and less reliable without causing me grief.

alexb_ 4y ago
>So I bought solar panels and batteries ...Mission accomplished?
- sulam 4y ago
  "Profit"
- zbrozek 4y ago
  Sortof? The chumps left behind have fewer people to help amortize fixed costs.
  - landemva 4y ago
    Hawaiian islands have struggled with this for a decade. Rich people put up solar cells with usage offsets and get grid scale reliability on the backs of those who can't put up solar cells due to being poor or living in an apartment.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      I'm going a step further. No grid connection at all. Uptime isn't great anyway-about 87% in July in my neighborhood.

landemva 4y ago

For the small amount I consume, tiny potential savings are not worth the mental hassles. I switched a residence to flat rate to avoid these mental games.

shiftpgdn 4y ago
My house uses around 3-4MW/mo. I hyper optimized when I had true spot pricing before Griddy energy was disbanded by the state. My bill was extremely low compared to what I pay now.
- khuey 4y ago
  Average US residential consumption is under 1MWh/mo so you are definitely not a typical customer.
- bonzini 4y ago
  What? My house used 4 MWh a year in 2020, with two people working from home and two kids. Of these about half (IIRC) is self-produced solar. Stove and heating are gas and I do not have a tumble dryer, but does that justify a 10x difference??
  - vel0city 4y ago
    My home uses over 2MWh/mo over the summer, I think our peak bill this year was ~3200kWh. Average highs these last few months has been around 100F or so and very sunny, with at least one month >100F for the high every day. Its finally "cooling off" around here, with our highs being in the upper 90s most days. Cooling >2000sqft of space, even with some decent insulation and keeping the AC to 78F in the day, uses a lot of energy. It uses ~30A @ 240V, so ~7.2kW. If it had to run 12 hours in a day, that's 86.4kWh in just a single day. Doing that for a month straight, that's 2,592kWh. I was going to write up the math on how much my pool pump uses, but honestly it kind of turned into peanuts compared to the amount our AC usage is. The pump is 3/4HP. Running ~600W on the schedule of 8 hours a day + 12 hour once a week shock it really only worked out to 172.8kWh/mo of usage. Still though, that's 52% of your entire usage for just my pool. Last year we probably used ~3,000kWh charging the EV. That's on average 250kWh/mo.

notatoad 4y ago

it is, but that's the part that technology can actually help us with. all the internet-connected smart home stuff that companies have been trying to sell us is a bit silly when electricity is sold at a flat rate, but if my car charger, my clothes dryer, or my or my dishwasher could sit idle until electricity prices drop into the cheap zone and then turn themselves on, that internet connection becomes useful. an attitude of "i don't want to deal with the stress of thinking about the electricity i use" is absolutely the sort of luxury that you should pay extra for, the people willing to schedule their power usage to reduce peak demand should be paying less than the people who aren't willing to do that.

AceyMan 4y ago
this just makes me think of the situation that resulted in Global TCP Synchronization flapping problem; when everyone is operating on the same premise without some random delay or other way to 'shard' the load it seems like a Slashdot effect is bound to happen.
- mirchiseth 4y ago
  Saw the Slashdot effect reference after such a long time. Not sure what % of HNers were there in the heydays of /.
  - jeffreygoesto 4y ago
    More than you think? =;-{)} Wo remembers the "Anonymous FTP Sites List"?
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/ https://old.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  You are comparing a complex, out of band, auction-based organization system with a simple, no added overhead, parameter-guessing system. Those don't fail on the same ways.