> power during cheaper off-peak times
Pretty sure my rate is the same all the time. I wonder what percentage of electricity customers have variable rate pricing.
Pretty sure my rate is the same all the time. I wonder what percentage of electricity customers have variable rate pricing.
In a situation where many people were doing load shifting, I think this could even benefit those who aren't doing load shifting themselves (by reducing peak demand across the network).
In the UK, the peak demand is already in the evening[1], because solar has eaten the cheap lunch during the day (which it was supposed to do, but it means that each additional solar panel is going to have a harder job paying for itself). And the demand difference between low and high is about 30GW to 40GW.
I believe peak demand in most non-industrial areas is already evening, because residential areas tend to have less efficient energy use than commercial spaces due to density, and everyone is home at the same time, often doing energy intensive tasks such as cooking, using the A/C, opening the fridge. I heard from someone at a power company that advertisements during the Super Bowl are a major issue, because everyone opens their fridge and flushes the toilet at the same time, and power supply has to spike for 3 minutes and then return to normal.
"Time of use" charges more for kWh use during peak hours and less during off-peak. Depending on your usage patterns it can be cheaper to do time of use pricing.
I would not expect the utility companies to be allies in this transition period to clean energy. It requires major capital outlays from them, it invalidates previous investments that have not fully depreciated, and in the end they will probably make less money.
This is not to throw a wet blanket on solar and storage, I just think we need to be cognizant of the idea that in all likelihood utility companies are both required to change for this whole thing to work and will be very resistant to that change. There might need to be changes to incentives or regulation to get the utility companies moving in the right direction faster.
Electric utilities require capital investment proportional to peak usage, but only earn returns on average usage. This will only increase the ROIC of an electric utility by reducing the peak:average ratio.
Additionally, electric utilities are in a constant cycle of capacity upgrades to keep up with increasing demand. Customers adding distributed storage allows utilities to delay capital investment (which makes the company look better in the near-term).
Don't know if that's their actual cost-structure, but it's plausible in the abstract.
Not if the price they sell at is different at different hours.