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That would work if personal/residential consumption used the majority of power production but industrial and transportation uses far outpace the demand of cons
by cc439 12y ago
That would work if personal/residential consumption used the majority of power production but industrial and transportation uses far outpace the demand of consumers: http://www.nap.edu/books/12621/xhtml/images/p2001b2d5g186001.jpg http://www.nap.edu/books/12621/xhtml/images/p2001b2d5g186001...
The costs associated with throttling/halting these sectors far outweighs the cost of overbuilt infrastructure. Electricity is already sold by the megawatt in "day ahead" commodity form so businesses have already priced this information into the market.
- mcooley 12y agoThat chart is misleading because it shows consumption of all sources of energy, not just electricity. We don't use 28% of our electricity for transportation (yet!). Listings of electricity consumption by sector [1] show that the residential sector consumes the biggest share of electricity in the US. And the residential sector also has the highest seasonal variability in power consumption [2]. So better demand control for consumers might actually pay off pretty well. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption#Electricity_Final_Consumption_by_categories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption#Ele... [2] http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10211 http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10211