Comment by iamstupidsimple | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamstupidsimple | Hacker News Reader

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iamstupidsimple

> The idea is to not only adjust supply to the demand, but to shape the demand to the supply.

This is completely backwards. Demand is highly price inelastic and inversely correlated with the supply of renewables. People usually eat at night. They heat their homes overnight. None of these things will change based on energy prices.

What you're proposing is a tax on the poor, and no practical benefit to boot.

> The charger for your electric car is another very practical sink for cheap electricity.

I don't have an electric car. I do not know anybody with an electric car. And wouldn't the surplus show up specifically when those cars aren't at the home?

> A battery consisting of a pile of rocks can't be expensive.

No, but the labor cost of hooking up your pile of rocks battery will be impractical for almost everyone.

> The next level is using residential HVAC systems the same way.

Again, I don't know anybody with an HVAC system. Everything here in the UK is based on natural gas and would cost an unbelievable amount of money to replace with electric.

> Demand is highly price inelastic

There's no evidence of that. The only evidence is that when the price is exactly the same 24/7, no elasticity is observed.

> and would cost an unbelievable amount of money to replace with electric

I've had to replace gas furnaces and gas water heaters now and then. They don't last more than 10 years or so.

BTW, everybody in Arizona has A/C. Amazingly, A/C demand peaks when the sun is high in the sky.

> I do not know anybody with an electric car

You will.

> BTW, everybody in Arizona has A/C. Amazingly, A/C demand peaks when the sun is high in the sky.

Here in California, peak AC demand is late afternoon. Environmental thermal mass means peak outdoor temperature happens a fair bit after peak insolation. Structures take even more time to heat up and add additional delay. Finally, people arriving home from work means increased AC use, too.

Demand stays fairly high after it gets dark.

(And it's my understanding most other places keep daytime heat later than here).

Simple. Set the A/C temp to lower than comfortable during the peak solar times. Your house won't heat up immediately, if you've insulated it properly.

Sure, there all kinds of ways to move demand around from when it would naturally peak based on peoples' preferences.

This particular one is only mildly effective; precooling can lower later demand somewhat.

My house is very well insulated, but I still cannot coast from 5:30pm to 9:30pm (when windows are sufficient for comfort and demand really starts to slope off) without an excessive amount of prechilling. My structure, insulation, and attic are all preheated by the day's heat and so there is a big warm thermal mass next to my living space.

Also, opening windows overnight increases indoor humidity, which in turn requires more air conditioning the next day.

> This particular one is only mildly effective

If it'll save you 10% on your electric bill, would you do it? I would. And reducing peak demand by 10% can really reduce the cost and need for grid battery storage.

Best of all, doing this sort of management of your HVAC system costs you essentially nothing. It's picking money off the ground.

My house has a 25 year old gas furnace and it is still in solid condition. Had to get the blower motor replaced but that is about it. Our AC unit did not fare as well so we may be upgrading both next year. But yeah, they can last a lot longer than 10 years.

We have had "off peak hot water" for many decades. Multiple different rates for peak and off-peak.

It is not useless but it does have its price in terms of complexity and usability. With off peak at night you tend to run out of hot water during the day at times e.g. if you have visitors.

It is not a new idea and it is no panacea.

> It is not a new idea

I've never seen it mentioned in any articles about baseline and peak power needs, and all that talk about grid batteries.

> and it is no panacea.

Nobody said it was. If it would, say, reduce the need for grid batteries by 10%, that would be an enormous savings. All by changing a new thermostat.

I remember in the 70s energy crisis the appearance of programmable thermostats what would automatically lower the temp at night. My proposal just extends that.

> BTW, everybody in Arizona has A/C. Amazingly, A/C demand peaks when the sun is high in the sky.

Magically when solar production is at it's peak!

> Demand is highly price inelastic and inversely correlated with the supply of renewables.

The first is dubious, the second is... highly location dependent.

Peak demand in California matches peak solar output pretty well; before solar was big, supply concerns focused on peak demand hours, in the afternoon; now they are in the evening because solar has made the highest gross demand time the time where there is the least concern for supply.

> No, but the labor cost of hooking up your pile of rocks battery will be impractical for almost everyone.

The labor cost of hooking it up isn't that bad, geothermal heat pumps aren't that costly.

Insulating the pile of rocks battery is probably the hard part.

Where is the tax on the poor here?

He basically shared that some costly energy consumption (such as water heating) can be easily shaped to the supply.

Poor people who can't afford e.g. smart water heaters will pay the high spot price.

Can't afford a smart water heater? We're just talking about the thermostat for it. I doubt a mass produced thermostat that could get a price from the internet would cost more than $10. I don't know what your electric bill is, but I'd be cash positive in the first month.

This only applies in areas that already use electric heaters. Anywhere else poor people cannot afford to replace their gas heater with an electric one. And if they rent they have no choice, it’s up to the landlord. In some locales it is common for the renter to pay for the heat bill. So the landlord has little incentive to install a different heating system. In other locales the average cost of heat is factored in to the price of rent and the incentives are basically the same.

> I doubt a mass produced thermostat that could get a price from the internet would cost more than $10

Total costs will be low if you can also find a perfectly spherical plumber (& electrician (& WiFi/4G-technician)) that charges less than $1 per hour for installation.

Amazon offers quite a smorgasbord of thermostats you can install for your home.

Obviously, nobody buys them.

In New Zealand the law and insurance requires that only registered electricians can work on household wiring, with paperwork per house to confirm. Surprisingly enough most people are unwilling to do something illegal, that will also void their house insurance.

Perhaps the laws and insurance rules are less strict where you are?

I also think that very few people feel comfortable working on household wiring, and very few people are comfortable with fixing plumbed in appliances.

I will add that the law is good, because houses get sold, and wiring is invisible, and no future owner wants to find out their wiring is bodged up by some clueless software engineer.

There is some truely terrifyingly dangerous wiring done by amateurs.

>that could get a price from the internet

If we're dealing with rural areas reliable internet isn't always a given. The UK had an interesting solution for this for older electricity meters which encodes data in the BBC Radio 4 LW (198 kHz AM) radio station. Most of the country is covered by a single transmitter because of how efficiently LF waves propagate and it doesn't require an internet connection to work. Sadly I think the rise of smart meters will probably be the death knell for Radio 4 LW too.

I think it's easy to forget how flakey the internet can be outside of major cities in some places. Having lived in places that are fairly off the beaten track I wouldn't want my electricity bill to depend on always having a reliable WiFi connection for example.

> If we're dealing with rural areas reliable internet isn't always a given

Yes, since my proposed solution is not 100% it's useless.

> Poor people who can't afford e.g. smart water heaters

Will have them subsidized in units they own (not that poor people generally own) and mandated in units they rent

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