4 ms·

> Charge higher rates for essential. This makes ZERO sense.. I live in a cold climate.. Our furnace is "essential" to prevent my family and i from freezing t

> Charge higher rates for essential. This makes ZERO sense.. I live in a cold climate.. Our furnace is "essential" to prevent my family and i from freezing to death. Under your plan we should pay more for this? And those who cant afford it? Let me guess, government rebates, making a complex program even more complex? Any time your solution requires "rebates".. it is flawed from the start.

Someone 4y ago
You can also write “Charge higher rates for essential” as “Offer cheaper electricity that has lower quality of service guarantees”. If seen that way, you wouldn’t pay more; you would have to he choice to get cheaper electricity. I foresee high demand for electronics that seamlessly switch from the lower quality of service feed to the ‘essential’ one when that cheaper feed stops working, though.
- toast0 4y ago
  You could have tarrif rules that the essential meter charges at the regular rate if the regular meter is energized, or near the regular rate. That would have the benefit of letting the power utility accurately forecast the essential load, and would disincentivize the transfer switches.
toast0 4y ago
It would make sense to have say your stage 1 heating that could keep your house livable but rather cold on essential, and your stage 2 heating which made things comfortable on the less available feed. I'd also put refrigerators and minimal lighting on essential. The alternative as presented was some sort of compliance program hoping people wouldn't just run everything off the 'essential' feed regardless of need, or rolling blackouts as currently practiced. It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?
- derefr 4y ago
  > It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value? In a similar sense that I'm not willing to pay more for "essential" food than for luxury food; or in the same sense that it seems unfair to have to pay for life-saving medical treatments. It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand — the whole meaning of the word "inelastic" being that changing the price of it won't incentivize people to use any more/less of it. Inelastic demand should, at the very least, be subsidized. This is why public healthcare exists; why food stamps exist; etc. But better yet, inelastic demand — because it is so predictable — should be optimized heavily for by suppliers (for power plants, this is "building out base-load capacity") such that economies of scale enable the supply for inelastic demand to be satisfied with lower cost than the supply for elastic demand.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    > It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad.. "Charge more for essential services" just sounds terrible and you are correct, inelastic demand needs to be affordable, and subsidized if it is NOT affordable. i dont understand how someone would advocate that "essential services has higher value to me and should cost more". Essential services like heating my home does not have a higher value, it is an absolutely essential service to prevent death from cold temperatures.. This person should try living in -24C without heat and see if it changes their views.
    - toast0 4y ago
      If I lived in -24C, it would be extremely valuable for me to have heat. As it is, I live in a climate that does dip below 0C from time to time, and having access to heat is important, so I have a backup generator for the house, and another for the well, because water is important too. When I use them, just the energy cost is much higher than utility power, so I don't use them when utility power is available. There's capital cost and operational costs to pay too. Many people who live around me don't have generators, so they have to hope outages won't be too long, or that they can make it to a warming center --- but outages are often coincident with locally heavy snowfall and our roads are always steep, so that makes it difficult to travel even short distances to get to warmth. In my area, the issue isn't rolling blackouts, it's usually lines broken due to falling trees. Paying more for uninterupted utilities wouldn't fix that, but if it were rolling blackouts, I would certainly prefer to pay more for utility power for essential loads rather than paying more for local generation for essential loads.
nasmorn 4y ago
Your furnace will either use very little electricity if it burns something else or it is exactly the kind of thing to shut off since your home can already buffer heat quite effectively. Allowing room temperature to drop by 1 or 2 degrees is preferable to blackouts.

Someone 4y ago

You can also write “Charge higher rates for essential” as “Offer cheaper electricity that has lower quality of service guarantees”. If seen that way, you wouldn’t pay more; you would have to he choice to get cheaper electricity. I foresee high demand for electronics that seamlessly switch from the lower quality of service feed to the ‘essential’ one when that cheaper feed stops working, though.

toast0 4y ago
You could have tarrif rules that the essential meter charges at the regular rate if the regular meter is energized, or near the regular rate. That would have the benefit of letting the power utility accurately forecast the essential load, and would disincentivize the transfer switches.

toast0 4y ago

It would make sense to have say your stage 1 heating that could keep your house livable but rather cold on essential, and your stage 2 heating which made things comfortable on the less available feed. I'd also put refrigerators and minimal lighting on essential. The alternative as presented was some sort of compliance program hoping people wouldn't just run everything off the 'essential' feed regardless of need, or rolling blackouts as currently practiced. It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?

derefr 4y ago
> It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value? In a similar sense that I'm not willing to pay more for "essential" food than for luxury food; or in the same sense that it seems unfair to have to pay for life-saving medical treatments. It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand — the whole meaning of the word "inelastic" being that changing the price of it won't incentivize people to use any more/less of it. Inelastic demand should, at the very least, be subsidized. This is why public healthcare exists; why food stamps exist; etc. But better yet, inelastic demand — because it is so predictable — should be optimized heavily for by suppliers (for power plants, this is "building out base-load capacity") such that economies of scale enable the supply for inelastic demand to be satisfied with lower cost than the supply for elastic demand.
- kennend3 4y ago
  > It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad.. "Charge more for essential services" just sounds terrible and you are correct, inelastic demand needs to be affordable, and subsidized if it is NOT affordable. i dont understand how someone would advocate that "essential services has higher value to me and should cost more". Essential services like heating my home does not have a higher value, it is an absolutely essential service to prevent death from cold temperatures.. This person should try living in -24C without heat and see if it changes their views.
  - toast0 4y ago
    If I lived in -24C, it would be extremely valuable for me to have heat. As it is, I live in a climate that does dip below 0C from time to time, and having access to heat is important, so I have a backup generator for the house, and another for the well, because water is important too. When I use them, just the energy cost is much higher than utility power, so I don't use them when utility power is available. There's capital cost and operational costs to pay too. Many people who live around me don't have generators, so they have to hope outages won't be too long, or that they can make it to a warming center --- but outages are often coincident with locally heavy snowfall and our roads are always steep, so that makes it difficult to travel even short distances to get to warmth. In my area, the issue isn't rolling blackouts, it's usually lines broken due to falling trees. Paying more for uninterupted utilities wouldn't fix that, but if it were rolling blackouts, I would certainly prefer to pay more for utility power for essential loads rather than paying more for local generation for essential loads.

nasmorn 4y ago

Your furnace will either use very little electricity if it burns something else or it is exactly the kind of thing to shut off since your home can already buffer heat quite effectively. Allowing room temperature to drop by 1 or 2 degrees is preferable to blackouts.