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Posted on 08/04/2011 1:29:01 PM PDT by dila813
"Smart power grid monitoring that lets you pick the exact cheapest time to run the dishwasher or recharge your electric car may put too much power (so to speak) in the hands of the consumer, according to a new study by MIT. Researchers say that users receiving minute-by-minute pricing information might cycle off-peak power use more rapidly than utilities can spool up their power plants. In other words, it's OK if you're the only person charging your Chevy Volt at 2am in the morning, but if a whole town does it exactly the same time... there will be issues."
(Excerpt) Read more at hardware.slashdot.org ...
Most people who propose ideas like this don’t like to talk to people who have already dealt with things like an “interruptible rate” power source.
Ask some farmers in the west what it is like to sign up for the interrupted irrigation rate... They were told when and for how long they’d have to shut down irrigation to qualify for the rate. It sounded quite feasible when they signed up. Only on the rare days when it was so hot in urban areas that the power was being diverted to California or Vegas or Phoenix, they were told. Then the power company will tell you 24 hours in advance to not have your pumps on for X so many hours the next day.
Then when the ugly truth came out, and they were being interrupted day after day after day and starting to lose their crops... they had to pay a premium to convert to the full demand rate to get their water back on.
The central problem in the US grid is that we have not enough transmission capacity, coupled with an increasing generation component that isn’t base load power. Toss in these sorts of “smart” scheduling gimmicks and the grid will likely destabilize as then we’ll really see rates go up.
Personally, If I ever have to contend with this crap, I’ll install my own power source(s).
There are more people charging their newest cell phones and ipads than the anemic number of Volts sold since it was introduced.
We were all "persuaded" to buy smart meters (through our rates) with the promise that we then could manage out consumption to take advantage of off-peak hours.
Now they're telling us that if we are too good at it we may be prohibited from doing so?
Put ignorant children in charge and nothing is surprising any longer.
“On a 100 degree day, the grid may throttle back your A/C regardless what you set the thermostat to.”
And how soon will a black market develop for Stuxnet-inspired control boxes that tell the utility what it wants to hear but runs your AC the way the homeowner wants it to run? I can envision that code right now. Excuse me, have to get to work.
Simple market solution here,
just like in equities and bonds,
major buyers (such as hospitals, manufacturers etc) will buy real time data equivalent to blackpool or colocated servers on the exchanges.
Mid size businesses (CRE management companies, etc) will buy equivalent to level 2 data,
home owners and small businesses will be left with buying level 3 data with a 15 minute delayed quote,
I think I might have a new business.
Using longitudinal tracking and existing load demand algorithms shouldn’t these utilities be able to sell a multi-tier quote system for off peak power?
Simple, just make it a little “smarter”.
****if Obama gets his way, there might be some coal-fired capacity that actually does go into seasonal cold shutdown.***
It could happen, There are already Summer peaking plants and winter peaking plants.
The summer peaking plants have their major overhauls in the early spring to be ready for the hot summer, while the winter peaking plants will have their major overhauls in the fall to be ready for cold winter use. The rest of the time they run all year long with just a spring and fall outage.
Obviously written by a liberal with fantasies of massive electric car sales.
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