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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time that have been successful. But as you say its going to need the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing machine/car charger.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-gre...

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I'm on Octopus Agile in the UK which offers pricing in 30 minute increments.

I'm lucky in that I have a small solar panel setup (3kW) and battery system (5kWh) to go with it. With this battery set-up you really don't need appliance support - most of the advantages are accrued by force-charging the batteries to avoid mains usage at the peak cost period (usually around 5pm-7pm).

I also have a few smart plugs which turn things on and off based on the current price and battery charge - using Home Assistant, but that's mainly me just nerding about. Handy when prices go negative, though and my electric immersion heater goes on to heat my hot water tank

Notably Octopus is working on taking much of the complexity away. There is now an opt-in service for certain battery makes where Octopus will take control of the battery charginng and discharging, to minimise your bill. It will even generate you money by doing a force charge and discharge when the grid is paying premium amounts

Your battery usage sounds exactly like the kind of behaviour they're trying to encourage but which aren't apparent to most people without an interest in these things so you left with the energy monitor which is really just a nice bonus to the system rather but is tangible to the lay person.

Of course the very real benefits of this can be abused by the gov and there are some conspiracy types using that to push their own agenda but on the whole I'm largely positive about the smart grid stuff.

> Of course the very real benefits of this can be abused by the gov and there are some conspiracy types using that to push their own agenda but on the whole I'm largely positive about the smart grid stuff.

There is usually a bigger of truth behind conspiracy theories. In this case there may be no reason to think the initial goal is to control what people are allowed to use energy for, but smart grid initiatives do open the door for that. The same automated systems that allow individuals to reduce their carbon footprint today could be abused to control people later.

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