Hacker News Reader

Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Use more pay more is pretty simple and implemented - and the lowest tiers are really cheap.

The complicated one is daily tiers - when power is more or less expensive at different times.

are daily tiers and dynamic pricing really needed for consumers, shoudn't it even out on the long term? Until recently it worked quite well for a energy supplier to supply me with a fixed rate for a year and still making profit (when I take a look at their yearly earnings report, I think I also subsidized heavy users with my low usage :D). over a year the price should average out quite nicely when I look at the energy mix in germany and the cost. The only "problem" we currently have is the merit order principle and the pegging of the (haywire) gas price to the energy price which makes calculations for suppliers difficult (and the absence of building renewable, and the maintenance and shutoffs of nuclear :D). Aside from that consumption is quite foreseeable and production also, so daily rates should not matter that much? I think paying by the hour/daily makes things just more complicated, I actually don't really want to time my laundry cooking with future prices on an hour/daily base :D

The goal with it is to encourage people to move load to coincide with demand. But it’s complicated and changes - during solar peaks the best time to do laundry may be midday but durning wind peaks that could be the middle of the night.

The solution is power storage either at a grid level or at a home level where the information is available to the smart batteries. And/or so much excess solar and wind that we just don’t care.

yeahh I see or just preload the washing machine and trigger it if the spupply is high .. but that means a lot of interconnected appliances.

I'm also planning to add one or two small 800Wp PV systems "Balkonsolar" to our flat (we have plenty of space on the south facing side) this will also involves pre planning for energy intensive stuff including a planned AC in the summer... let's see how this works out :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com