Originally Posted By: emg
So I'm supposed to be constantly monitoring the price of power and turning things off when it gets too expensive? Middle of winter, I'm going to turn off my furnace because they suddenly push up the price of power? Or get a $500 power bill because they did turn up the cost of power to $10 per kWh, and I didn't turn it off?
The whole point of 'smart meters' is to enable power companies to not build enough power stations to support peak demand, because they can force users to shut off their power. It's an attempt to turn the West into third-world nations that cannot rely on having reliable electricity. At which point, of course, we'll all have to go out and buy generators instead.
You control every other purchase that you make based on price to get it on the day, whether it means filling up in town on a Tuesday, or waiting to the weekend when you know it's going to be cheaper where you are travelling to...some days you buy steak, other days you don't.
When the peak requirement for generation is 40% higher than at mid-day, why would you want even MORE power stations idling at part load in the day, using more fuel and water because they are off their efficiency point ?
Just so you can run your kitchen, washer and drier and heat-pump all at the same minute ?
The numbers that you are quoting are the actual prices on the spot market...here, they are like 2.7-3c/KWHr (wholesale, retail is another 25c on top), but during peaks, the actual wholesale price can be $15/KWHr... for maybe 3 hours out of every 8,760 and nobody is going to build a new power station while for 8,757 hours of the year they aren't covering their costs (because they have to be in and running to get the peaks).
If market pricing gets you to run your drier while watching Family Ties, after dinner...all the better for all.
When Gary Allan was alive, he was explaining that his energy provider offered him a massive discount on his average price for the privilige of being able to disconnect him for an hour per month to manage peak demand (he said they did it maybe twice in a few years), and to trip his AC for 15 minutes an hour similarly to manage demand.
They are the flexibilities that you can have/take advantage of.
But if you want to run everything in the house from 5-8PM, just because you can, you can (ultimately) pay for them.