Electricity Costs A Cut And Paste
It's "Reality Check Time" and below is a cut n paste from the San Diego Union Tribune ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________...
Forum Discussion
Monthly averages help but far more effective is time of day price adjustment. If you don't reduce the peak demand, production and grid sizing are unchanged and that makes up anywhere from 60-80% of the cost of getting a KWH to your house.
Particularly with solar, you get predictable power peaks but those peaks don't typically coincide with peak demand (early evening). The result is the power company still has to maintain traditional production plants and grid capable of meeting that early evening peak as solar provides none at this time.
If you charge different rates by hour of the day, you shave that evening peak down and shift more to the mid day when solar output is high. With lower early evening peaks, they can reduce the need for traditional power production plants and sizing of the grid components.
To some degree, consumers can manually adjust by turning off unnecessary devices during these peak times but unless it's a big price spike, most won't bother and it's tedious.
Automated systems can help a lot more:
- Pre-cool the house late afternoon (while solar is still producing) to a colder temperature and then let it creep back up until the evening peak is past.
- Water heaters can likewise be overheated late afternoon and then they coast thru the peak with little or no further heating.
- Sensor based exterior lights that don't come on until later when the sun is actually down (after the peak demand).
- Battery powered devices can have timers built in so they don't charge unless critical until later in the night.
- Electric cars can use remaining charge to feed back into the system during the peak and then recharge late night when demand is lower.
The downside is you need a meter that tracks usage by hour of the day. Total monthly usage, they can simply calculate when generating the bills at almost no cost to the utility.
Particularly with solar, you get predictable power peaks but those peaks don't typically coincide with peak demand (early evening). The result is the power company still has to maintain traditional production plants and grid capable of meeting that early evening peak as solar provides none at this time.
If you charge different rates by hour of the day, you shave that evening peak down and shift more to the mid day when solar output is high. With lower early evening peaks, they can reduce the need for traditional power production plants and sizing of the grid components.
To some degree, consumers can manually adjust by turning off unnecessary devices during these peak times but unless it's a big price spike, most won't bother and it's tedious.
Automated systems can help a lot more:
- Pre-cool the house late afternoon (while solar is still producing) to a colder temperature and then let it creep back up until the evening peak is past.
- Water heaters can likewise be overheated late afternoon and then they coast thru the peak with little or no further heating.
- Sensor based exterior lights that don't come on until later when the sun is actually down (after the peak demand).
- Battery powered devices can have timers built in so they don't charge unless critical until later in the night.
- Electric cars can use remaining charge to feed back into the system during the peak and then recharge late night when demand is lower.
The downside is you need a meter that tracks usage by hour of the day. Total monthly usage, they can simply calculate when generating the bills at almost no cost to the utility.
