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Comment by hleszek | Hacker News Reader

Why don't we have our energy prices directly depending on the availability ? Each house should have a big meter showing the variable price and people will then use energy hungry appliances only when the energy is cheap.

This way we act as a buffer allowing better ressource usage.

Even better, appliances like dishwashers and washing machines could be connected to the network to read the price level and run automatically when the price is lower than a fixed amount.

Even better, for industries which are using energy automatically, they should bid for the excess energy and when there is a big surplus, the energy will be really cheap and will be used instead of going to waste.

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There's already something called time-of-use metering, which is like what you're suggesting but based on long-term trends rather than a spot price.

Right now it's only cost-effective with large loads, and only economical if it's largely automated.

(By point of comparison, most people already can't be bothered to switch off a 100W room light when they leave. That means we just don't GAF about saving pennies per hour if it means we have to push a button every so often).

However, seeing how heating and cooling are the only residential loads that are really worth worrying about, and both can typically be advanced or deferred by an hour or so without any problems, you could probably solve 90% of the problem by smartening up a handful of appliances in each home.

Industrial users can often do similar things. A cold storage facility, for example, could do most of it's cooling when power is cheap and then coast through the expensive periods. And they use enough electricity to pay someone (or buy an automated system) to handle it for them.

Once you solve heating and cooling, everything other than cooking (basically lighting and entertainment) is getting more and more efficient every year. And most people don't cook enough to make that a significant load.

The argument probably boils down to: the net economic loss in productivity from having every micro-power-user spend time worrying about whether it's a good or bad time to flip the switch, out-weighs the added market efficiency from what you describe.

Large users on the other hand, can devote a team to ensure optimal usage around complex / time-dependent tariffs.

Great point about smart appliances tho: that will have to wait for full integration of the smart grid and there will have to be a clear incentive to buy expensive appliances... since the overall savings could be fairly minimal (e.g. one less peaker plant) it's harder to provide benefits for millions of users. Again "demand response" e.g. turn-down-on-demand for large power users (perhaps even large building airconditioner loads) makes sense to target first.

There is no doubt a lot of interesting tech potential in this area... but utilities move so so slow.

Lots of large power users already do this, such as aluminum smelters.

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