Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksolanki | Hacker News Reader

This is insightful. The solution is probably to have a spot market for electricity that is accessible via an API so that smart AC or fridge or electric car charger can make use of it.

This will encourage market for devices that can utilize the lower spot prices dynamically and keep the things more efficient overall (in steady state).

View on HN

We've got these in New Zealand - once you have a "smart meter" (which I believe most homes now have), then you can pick an electricity retailer like https://www.flickelectric.co.nz that bills you according to the current price. Flick provides an API to allow you to turn on/off loads when you see fit.

Do they have individual control per outlet? Those loads namely ask quite a bit of power. The last mile with respect to control in the sense of a smart switch or plug per device is the most expensive part till now. That, assuming you can for internet access use the smart meter connection or the consumer's WiFi.

It seems people reuse the API which is used by the app. An example: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flick-electric-api

So it provides pricing info, not any home automation.

Even before smart metres, NZ has had a ripple control system since the 1950s which sends signals over the electric lines to your circuit breaker so the utility could remotely turn domestic hot water heaters off during periods of high demand. The technology is pretty simple, you could reverse it to turn appliances on when power is below cost.

http://www.oriongroup.co.nz/customers/load-management-and-ho...

Yes, in my house that is implemented as a ripple control "receiver", which switches on a circuit that has its own meter. The receiver is a rather simple thing I think; basically a high pass filter connected to the mains, with the filter output driving the coil in a relay. It audibly hums when ripple is on. Every couple months, the meter reader comes by and records the total amp*hours consumed at "night rate" and "normal rate".

So, it's important to note that the old system doesn't allow one to run the heat pump both whenever it's wanted, and also on the lower price ripple-controlled power. Similarly in the other direction, it doesn't make sense to use ripple control to decide when to feed back in to the grid if you have generating capacity from PV or whatever.

that's brilliant

Some electricity utilities offer this as a sort of service to their customers, where they detect high grid utilization days and notify customers they can save $ by reducing consumption on those days. Here's PG&E's page about their version: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...

It's not "smart" or automated, but it's a baby step.

This concept is called Demand Response and is quite prevalent. Consumers receive a discount for reducing their load at peak times.

This frequently targets very high demand customers rather than residential for the simple fact that it's easier to ask a company to delay starting a single piece of machinery than to reduce the load on an equivalent but large number consumer appliances like refirgerators.

Doing this at a residential level will require significant costs to support at a residential scale. Technology is the key in solving this problem.

I've been signed up with PECO for years in Pennsylvania for their SmartSaver program that targets my residential AC during the hottest summer months. I get a bill credit every month for participating.

https://www.peco.com/WaysToSave/ForYourHome/Pages/SmartACSav...

Instead of API, they could encode relative price directly into the power source.

It’s not an encoded price but some smart grid connected devices do use the frequency as an indicator of the grid has lots of demand (slightly lower frequency, generally higher price) or lots of supply (higher frequency, generally lower price).

Rainforest Automation sells a little Linux appliance that reads smart meter data from your energy meter. Some providers, (including mine - ComEd) provide the spot price via that meter. The Rainforest device has an api both cloud & local.

Whenever I get a couple of bored minutes I go and update a little go library I have to work with it https://github.com/kklipsch/reagle

Easier solution: The net frequency is already used for load control. Require consumer devices to react to it by law. No internet or setup needed

Reply on news.ycombinator.com