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The ability of the grid companies to rely on the fact that they can lower people’s electric usage centrally might prevent them from appropriately scaling up the
by soligern 3y ago
The ability of the grid companies to rely on the fact that they can lower people’s electric usage centrally might prevent them from appropriately scaling up the system.
- ceejayoz 3y agoIf they can smooth out peaks - if, say, a bunch of people set their thermostats to cool at 2pm so they spread that out over a 10-15 minute period, or they have some folks run AC at 2-3 and others 3-4 - they might need to also run a lot less wasteful energy production. As with most things, there are good and bad ways to use this ability.
- soligern 3y agoI would prefer if the two entities are separated though. The thermostat should come from a private company that optimizes for the weather locally and possibly takes in data from the electric company through an API so the end user has more control and the motivations for both entities stay intact.
- sh34r 3y agoI’d argue the cost of scaling up the grid, both economic and environmental, are too great when the problem can be resolved by raising everyone’s thermostat to 76 for a couple hours a year. Peaker plants are wildly expensive to keep in service, and usually run off of coal or oil.