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Comment by twothamendment | Hacker News Reader

"Each one of those things is inherently a form of energy storage, because you don't need any of those to start up or stop at the same milisecond where you flip the switch."

Using an appliance later is no more a form of energy storage than me "saving" air by holding my breath. Reduction in peak demand <> Storage.

On a hot summer day when I'm cooking in the house, running a load of dishes and trying to cool the house to a reasonable temperature - all before the guests arrive - Should the A/C wait for the dishwasher, which waits for refrigerator, which waits for the oven? Not in my house.

Storage - I'll gladly take some of that so my lighting and communication can be powered when the power is out. In that situation, the rest of those big loads can wait.

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Load scheduling is precisely equivalent to energy storage. You store electrical energy with the intention of consuming it later. Load scheduling just makes this explicit. In fact one of the benefits of scheduling over storage is that there's no extra losses due to charging / discharging the battery.

"One of the benefits of scheduling over storage is that there's no extra losses due to charging / discharging the battery."

Loss - that should be one of the first clues that scheduling is not storage. Any electrical storage in my lifetime will have loss, I can accept that.

I'll give you scheduling as storage when it comes to a freezer or hot water heater. Why? Electricity was converted to something that can be stored. There is loss - a clue to real storage taking place, not pretend scheduling "storage". If I heat a tank of hot water and want to shower an 3 hours later after I've turned off the power to my house I'll have a hot shower (in the dark).

Try the same thing with an electric clothes dryer. Plan to run it in 3 hours and turn the power off and see how well it works. What? The dryer didn't store any electricity?

Storage, by definition, means you have something. When it comes to the grid, storage and scheduling can both reduce peak demand, bug scheduling is far from storage.

We understand what you mean, but take issue with the semantics, because a dollar saved is a dollar earned presupposes the existence of that dollar, but your saving is fictive. Both versions are not invariant in load or time.

So the storage in your version is leaving it stored where it was. Great.

I'll second that the issue is only semantics. Scheduling is not the same thing as storage, but it _has the same effect on the grid_.

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