When any market gives no incentive for most participants to resolve any supply/demand imbalance, then shortages are sure to happen from time to time.
Electricity isn't even a market where people can 'panic buy' like toilet paper.
So, it is possible to have some force changing consumer behavior. It all depends on sane legislation, allowing a system like this to exist.
Obscenely powerful heaters are rather cheap. Assuming prices only go negative pretty rarely, you really want 100 kilowatts or more of heaters under your house to get as much free power as possible.
Hitting 76 kW is wildly impractical. Exceeding 100 kW is nonsense.
Alternatively, charge your own batteries and load balance. It's boring but effective.
You could have your computer queued to run high energy ops when free, queue training models, compiling, etc. Which would generate a lot of heat, thus cranking the AC.
I could see how this could easily 10x your power draw for a few thousand dollars and work in the background.
And of course the whole point is to incentivize changing usages to using less power during peak hours, which it does better than the old plans. There's always going to be a slight inconvenience to get everyone to change habits.
I have solar and a battery so it's really very little inconvenience for me, but those who can't afford that (and it's harder to afford now), will pay the worst costs.
By disincentivizing residential solar, the private utilities maximize their profits and decrease renewable energy installation.
Unless you have a battery, your peak demand is likely to be when solar generation is low, so you're still reliant on the same grid capacity during peak hours. That's the duck curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
Under the old plan, if you have solar and no battery and exported enough power during the day to cover your electricity costs at night, how much are you paying for grid upkeep? Basically zero. So who is going to be paying for the grid? Those who cannot afford to get solar. That would become a huge problem when the majority of people have solar panels.
https://youtu.be/C4cNnVK412U?t=1048 talks about this subject in-depth more. Timestamp at the relevant part to our discussion.
Even the CPUC's website says "retail rate (including generation, distribution, and transmission components)": https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NEM/
The grid has to be built to handle peak power, and if you don't have a battery, solar doesn't help with that. But it's not fair to split up grid fees evenly, say in the daily basic charge I have in my TOU plan, because poorer people will use less power and contribute less to peak. And you've brought up points on why raising prices during peak is no good either, then it'll be only affordable to the ones who have solar to offset it. And any fees only to solar customers disincentivizes solar.
I found this podcast interesting in terms of lower cost technical solutions as well as community control of their own microgrids, but it's really unclear how to push back private utility lobbying to get there.
https://theamphour.com/630-renewable-energy-policy-with-ari-...
But there was always this niggling concern that the price could spike to 200x like it did in Texas, without me being able to react. Regulation to cap the peak rate would help allay consumer fears, IMO, while still offering ample profit potential to providers.
You can't go into a dynamic environment and only plan for upsides.
1. Price per kWh - $1 last I checked
2. Hours per day at max price - ~9
3. Days per year max price charged - ~10
Even in the worst case, not too scary.
You could adjust the limit as you please, with a default of perhaps $100 - but they spare you from million dollar bills, even with uncapped dynamic pricing.
If a reasonable number of these were deployed, the prices would never spike super high, because there would always be someone else willing to turn off their tumble dryer to save 50 bucks.
Consumer demand just isn’t there for this type of product yet
Your water heater will provide water hot enough for a quick shower for a couple days.
but you've hit your daily limit? It's one thing to charge your Tesla later, it's anything
Just like when I lived in Iowa, the car always had blankets in the trunk. When I lived in Arizona, there was always a gallon of drinking water in the trunk (it works in the radiator, too!).
Just common sense.
> Texas experienced temperatures over 50 °F [28 °C] below normal. Records more than a century old were broken
How many people have planned and can execute plans for once in a century events that happen at scale?
I’d consider myself more prepared than most, but if a large chunk of Phoenix lost power in the middle of the summer for more than 24 hours, I think the result would be even worse. There was a study from a few days ago that predicted >12k deaths during a heat wave+power outage. That makes me reconsider not getting whole house batteries ;-)
People can "panic buy" generators, and have been doing so for a while. With solar panels on the roof for when the sun is available and some alternative source like your generator (cheap to buy, expensive to use) or batteries (expensive to buy, cheap to use) for when it is not and power has failed you can be mostly energy independent.
Gasoline generators are a PITA. Most of them require frequent oil changes. And floating neutral generators generally won't work well with GFI circuits because they easily see an imbalance in current across neutral and to the ground path. If you want your generator to be safe and work with GFI, you'll have to use a bonded one and ground it.
Most residential solar sets in California lack battery backup capacity and do not generate power in the absence of grid power "for safety". This is because most homeowners are uninformed consumers and don't know what options they need. It's worth getting a subpanel, moving critical loads to them, and having a 3-way ATS with solar-batteries-inverter, grid tie, and an autostart natural gas generator.
The only trouble is that gives no indication when the power comes back on. So there you are, generator blasting away, while power is restored. Leave a couple circuits always connected to the line power, and hook those to a radio or a light so you know when the line is back up.
P.S. if you get a generator with an electric starter, odds are good the battery will be dead. The trick is to add a couple power posts to it, so you can jump start it with your car.
But you can, in fact, see when utility power comes back on if you have a "smart meter" - the LCD panel readout is dead/blank during the outage but is active and displaying once the power comes back on.
So we just peek at the meter every once in a while to see if PG&E is back ...
However, I think you can "panic buy" electricity. I live in a place with unreliable electricity. On hot days, I'm more inclined to cool my house with the AC earlier/colder than I would if I could absolutely count on the electricity being available. If the power goes out, at least my house is cool for a short while.
You have an incentive when the power to your residence or place of business goes out.