7 ms·

* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit

willvarfar 11mo ago
Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.
- mikeyouse 11mo ago
  They could also run their AC to below where their normal set point would be to “bank” some of the free electricity. I wonder if we’ll start seeing other more passive energy sinks… if you lived in a hot area and could rely on several hours of free electricity each day, it enables all sorts of interesting options like turning on a secondary cooling system to “charge” a large boulder or hunk of metal that you could then pass air over to cool your house when energy is expensive again.
  - ch4s3 11mo ago
    If you built homes with a lot of thermal mass, you could cool the internal thermal mass when energy is $0 and have that mass absorb heat the rest of the day. This is sort of the principle a lot of traditional architecture uses where evaporation, wind over a courtyard, or nighttime lows cool thick walls.
    - mikeyouse 11mo ago
      Yep, our house was built like this but in a cooler climate (large windows facing south with the all of the stone flooring and surfaces getting direct sunlight in the winter). But since most houses in the Aussie suburbs aren’t really optimized for this, you’d have to retrofit many million houses to take full advantage. Opens up some interesting opportunities for sure.
      - ch4s3 11mo ago
        Yeah, for sure. Building for 0 carbon AC and electric resistive heating will probably look a little different.
    - bobmcnamara 11mo ago
      This is how the cold storage caves work in the Midwest. They run their ammonia loops harder in the off hours and let the cave mass handle it(provided a large enough area is kept frozen, otherwise thermal expansion cycling can cause a carve out in the ceiling).
- BtM909 11mo ago
  More countries where there's a surplus, are advising people to charge or use electricity during the day.
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  This is the “smart grid” idea, right? We just haven’t fully explored it yet. Something I firmly believe is that there’s a ton of low hanging fruit for timing our energy use better. It is just hidden by the desire to present a uniform energy price. Like why not run our water heaters when power is cheap? Then if that became a thing, we might even be interested in larger water heater tanks. Batteries cost per volume, you only pay for the surface are of a metal tank!
  - naIak 11mo ago
    Power at peak times is cheap because load is distributed throughout the day. If everybody ran their heaters at the same time, power wouldn’t be so cheap and we’d reach the same situation we’re in.
    - bee_rider 11mo ago
      If power wasn’t cheaper, there’d be no incentive to run our heaters at the same time. I’d expect the market to work this out, and price power down during unexpected over-supply, rewarding nimble workloads. Then there arrives a reward for being nimble, which is something we should incentivize I think.
    - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
      Power at peak times is cheap because it's the time of highest insolation.
      - naIak 11mo ago
        You’re missing the other side of the equation.
    - tstrimple 11mo ago
      Think of being able to set a price on Amazon Spot instances where it's low enough to charge your home battery for "free". When the price is right, you recharge your batteries as much as possible. When the price falls outside the range, you leverage your battery to offset the higher electricity prices. This would be part of the "smart" in "smart grids".
ch4s3 11mo ago
This seems like a great way to encourage the behavior you want, which is conserving when energy is emitting more carbon by shifting consumption. Do your laundry, charge a car, charge a whole house batter, run laundry, crank the AC, run your own aluminum smelter, whatever.
- RobinL 11mo ago
  In the UK, you can go on an agile tariff that does exactly this. I'm on one. It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff, and it's nice to be doing something good for the environment too. It's particularly satisfying to charge up the car when tariffs go negative. Here's today's rates (actuals): https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile Here's a forecast: https://prices.fly.dev/A/ https://prices.fly.dev/A/
  - hexbin010 11mo ago
    > It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. As if we aren't busy enough. I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them. Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc? IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal
    - RobinL 11mo ago
      I think it's best to view this from an economics point of view - in a nutshell price signals are usually the most powerful way to create behavioural change; in this case, we want people to shift demand away from peak times. Nobody is being forced to, they just have to pay more for the convenience of not bothering. > IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal It actually costs a lot more to produce marginal energy at peak times, the cost just reflects the cost of production. It doesn't seem unreasonable for me for the consumer to bear the cost, and also get the benfit if they choose to put their car to charge overnight rather than at peak time. This also has a nice secondary benefit: anyone on agile tariffs who shifts demand away from peak time actually benefits those who don't want to bother, because the peak price/cost goes down, and so the overall average price of electricity goes down. > I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them In most other market, people are expected to respond to price incentives. When local apples are cheap relative to imported cherries, people don't complain that government/business is making us do a job to push demand in the direction of apples. > Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc? The free market price _is_ the agile price. The government intervention is actually in the direction of fixing prices (e.g. by the energy price cap, which is sometimes below the free market price at peak times). In general, markets do not work very well when the government fixes the market When you let the market clear and send out price signals, markets almost always become more efficient (which means that consumers benefit overall)
notatoad 11mo ago
still sounds like an incredible way to incentivize consumers to buy small-scale storage. if i knew i could get free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week) it'd be a very easy choice to drop ~$1000 on a home battery.
- loeg 11mo ago
  You'd spend $1000 to save $0.20 on electricity every day?
  - byefruit 11mo ago
    7.3% return, not bad. As battery prices drop it will get even better.
    - marcosdumay 11mo ago
      It's not 7.3% return rate. There's some depreciation you need to add there.
      - WheatMillington 11mo ago
        If you're going to depreciate the battery then your return will be substantially greater than 7.3%. You can't use BOTH the capex AND the depreciation as your denominator, choose one.
  - testing22321 11mo ago
    The average price of power in Australia is 34 cents per kWh. The average Aussie spends A LOT more than $0.20 per day.
    - loeg 11mo ago
      GP isn't talking about a full day's use, but "free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week)."
gpm 11mo ago
The real price of solar electricity is never negative. Unlike something like oil wells (which really have driven the price of oil negative) you can just turn solar off. Prices have gone negative because of things like subsidies - which in the short term is a good thing IMHO - it subsidizes industries developing systems to make use of that free (but not negative cost) energy...
- marcosdumay 11mo ago
  > you can just turn solar off Somebody has to go and turn it off, and having this person available overwhelms all of your operational costs. Or alternatively, you need the infrastructure to do it automatically, what is currently expensive. (But there aren't intrinsic reasons for that being expensive, it's probably due to lack of scale.) If it's just slightly negative, or just rarely so, it's not worth it.
  - testing22321 11mo ago
    Basically every home in Australia, and certainly every home and business solar setup, has a smart meter that is grid connected and can be remotely shut down when needed. Or they even just limit the amount that can feedback to the grid if required I.e you’re making 8kw of solar, but it will only let you feed in 2 if the system determines that. There is not “person” turning things on and off.
    - viraptor 11mo ago
      Since this year, you're also forced to have the remote kill switch on the new solar installations at home.
  - quickthrowman 11mo ago
    Commercial solar fields are entirely automated, nobody is going to the site to throw a disconnect switch lol. For sites without hardwire internet, there’s 4G or satellite connectivity. A 4G cell comm module is a few hundred dollars. Adding in remote operations control is probably a tiny fraction of a percent of a solar field project.
senectus1 11mo ago
and only in a few states. My home state of WA is not a part of the same power netwrok.

willvarfar 11mo ago

Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.

mikeyouse 11mo ago
They could also run their AC to below where their normal set point would be to “bank” some of the free electricity. I wonder if we’ll start seeing other more passive energy sinks… if you lived in a hot area and could rely on several hours of free electricity each day, it enables all sorts of interesting options like turning on a secondary cooling system to “charge” a large boulder or hunk of metal that you could then pass air over to cool your house when energy is expensive again.
- ch4s3 11mo ago
  If you built homes with a lot of thermal mass, you could cool the internal thermal mass when energy is $0 and have that mass absorb heat the rest of the day. This is sort of the principle a lot of traditional architecture uses where evaporation, wind over a courtyard, or nighttime lows cool thick walls.
  - mikeyouse 11mo ago
    Yep, our house was built like this but in a cooler climate (large windows facing south with the all of the stone flooring and surfaces getting direct sunlight in the winter). But since most houses in the Aussie suburbs aren’t really optimized for this, you’d have to retrofit many million houses to take full advantage. Opens up some interesting opportunities for sure.
    - ch4s3 11mo ago
      Yeah, for sure. Building for 0 carbon AC and electric resistive heating will probably look a little different.
  - bobmcnamara 11mo ago
    This is how the cold storage caves work in the Midwest. They run their ammonia loops harder in the off hours and let the cave mass handle it(provided a large enough area is kept frozen, otherwise thermal expansion cycling can cause a carve out in the ceiling).
BtM909 11mo ago
More countries where there's a surplus, are advising people to charge or use electricity during the day.
bee_rider 11mo ago
This is the “smart grid” idea, right? We just haven’t fully explored it yet. Something I firmly believe is that there’s a ton of low hanging fruit for timing our energy use better. It is just hidden by the desire to present a uniform energy price. Like why not run our water heaters when power is cheap? Then if that became a thing, we might even be interested in larger water heater tanks. Batteries cost per volume, you only pay for the surface are of a metal tank!
- naIak 11mo ago
  Power at peak times is cheap because load is distributed throughout the day. If everybody ran their heaters at the same time, power wouldn’t be so cheap and we’d reach the same situation we’re in.
  - bee_rider 11mo ago
    If power wasn’t cheaper, there’d be no incentive to run our heaters at the same time. I’d expect the market to work this out, and price power down during unexpected over-supply, rewarding nimble workloads. Then there arrives a reward for being nimble, which is something we should incentivize I think.
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    Power at peak times is cheap because it's the time of highest insolation.
    - naIak 11mo ago
      You’re missing the other side of the equation.
  - tstrimple 11mo ago
    Think of being able to set a price on Amazon Spot instances where it's low enough to charge your home battery for "free". When the price is right, you recharge your batteries as much as possible. When the price falls outside the range, you leverage your battery to offset the higher electricity prices. This would be part of the "smart" in "smart grids".

ch4s3 11mo ago

This seems like a great way to encourage the behavior you want, which is conserving when energy is emitting more carbon by shifting consumption. Do your laundry, charge a car, charge a whole house batter, run laundry, crank the AC, run your own aluminum smelter, whatever.

RobinL 11mo ago
In the UK, you can go on an agile tariff that does exactly this. I'm on one. It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff, and it's nice to be doing something good for the environment too. It's particularly satisfying to charge up the car when tariffs go negative. Here's today's rates (actuals): https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile Here's a forecast: https://prices.fly.dev/A/ https://prices.fly.dev/A/
- hexbin010 11mo ago
  > It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. As if we aren't busy enough. I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them. Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc? IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal
  - RobinL 11mo ago
    I think it's best to view this from an economics point of view - in a nutshell price signals are usually the most powerful way to create behavioural change; in this case, we want people to shift demand away from peak times. Nobody is being forced to, they just have to pay more for the convenience of not bothering. > IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal It actually costs a lot more to produce marginal energy at peak times, the cost just reflects the cost of production. It doesn't seem unreasonable for me for the consumer to bear the cost, and also get the benfit if they choose to put their car to charge overnight rather than at peak time. This also has a nice secondary benefit: anyone on agile tariffs who shifts demand away from peak time actually benefits those who don't want to bother, because the peak price/cost goes down, and so the overall average price of electricity goes down. > I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them In most other market, people are expected to respond to price incentives. When local apples are cheap relative to imported cherries, people don't complain that government/business is making us do a job to push demand in the direction of apples. > Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc? The free market price _is_ the agile price. The government intervention is actually in the direction of fixing prices (e.g. by the energy price cap, which is sometimes below the free market price at peak times). In general, markets do not work very well when the government fixes the market When you let the market clear and send out price signals, markets almost always become more efficient (which means that consumers benefit overall)

notatoad 11mo ago

still sounds like an incredible way to incentivize consumers to buy small-scale storage. if i knew i could get free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week) it'd be a very easy choice to drop ~$1000 on a home battery.

loeg 11mo ago
You'd spend $1000 to save $0.20 on electricity every day?
- byefruit 11mo ago
  7.3% return, not bad. As battery prices drop it will get even better.
  - marcosdumay 11mo ago
    It's not 7.3% return rate. There's some depreciation you need to add there.
    - WheatMillington 11mo ago
      If you're going to depreciate the battery then your return will be substantially greater than 7.3%. You can't use BOTH the capex AND the depreciation as your denominator, choose one.
- testing22321 11mo ago
  The average price of power in Australia is 34 cents per kWh. The average Aussie spends A LOT more than $0.20 per day.
  - loeg 11mo ago
    GP isn't talking about a full day's use, but "free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week)."

gpm 11mo ago

The real price of solar electricity is never negative. Unlike something like oil wells (which really have driven the price of oil negative) you can just turn solar off. Prices have gone negative because of things like subsidies - which in the short term is a good thing IMHO - it subsidizes industries developing systems to make use of that free (but not negative cost) energy...

marcosdumay 11mo ago
> you can just turn solar off Somebody has to go and turn it off, and having this person available overwhelms all of your operational costs. Or alternatively, you need the infrastructure to do it automatically, what is currently expensive. (But there aren't intrinsic reasons for that being expensive, it's probably due to lack of scale.) If it's just slightly negative, or just rarely so, it's not worth it.
- testing22321 11mo ago
  Basically every home in Australia, and certainly every home and business solar setup, has a smart meter that is grid connected and can be remotely shut down when needed. Or they even just limit the amount that can feedback to the grid if required I.e you’re making 8kw of solar, but it will only let you feed in 2 if the system determines that. There is not “person” turning things on and off.
  - viraptor 11mo ago
    Since this year, you're also forced to have the remote kill switch on the new solar installations at home.
- quickthrowman 11mo ago
  Commercial solar fields are entirely automated, nobody is going to the site to throw a disconnect switch lol. For sites without hardwire internet, there’s 4G or satellite connectivity. A 4G cell comm module is a few hundred dollars. Adding in remote operations control is probably a tiny fraction of a percent of a solar field project.

senectus1 11mo ago

and only in a few states. My home state of WA is not a part of the same power netwrok.