[HN Gopher] Is the smart grid all hot air?
___________________________________________________________________
Is the smart grid all hot air?
Author : mooreds
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-07-09 16:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (austinvernon.site)
(TXT) w3m dump (austinvernon.site)
| etimberg wrote:
| I'm surprised this didn't touch on some of the other distribution
| grid ideas that have been piloted. At a past job I helped create
| software that valued power from DERs based on real-time grid
| conditions [1]. The idea was that some distributed generation was
| worth more to the distribution operator because it alleviated
| other problems in the grid such as congestion.
|
| 1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/opus-one-
| tests-...
| malchow wrote:
| The real future is a fully distributed series of microgrids,
| which affords all of distributed generation, smart grid
| coordination, _and_ resilience. If you want to work on this,
| think about joining Enphase, which makes grid-forming
| microinverters and the software to coordinate on a micro and
| macro level: https://enphase.com/careers
|
| A 'smart grid' that continues to give utilities a mainframe style
| monopoly position will not work and will never be the solution.
| They simply aren't capable of building or maintaining the
| infrastructure, at any price.
|
| Or email me if interested.
| Havoc wrote:
| One thing I'd really like to see more of is demand management -
| specifically ripple switches for eletric boilers
|
| 1) 1950s era technology, so well understood
|
| 2) Comically cheap vs storage
|
| 3) Instant response
|
| 4) No/low inconvencience - well insulated boilers hold temp of
| 24hr+
|
| It's such an easy win to shave the top off the evening peak &
| thus reduces need for battery storage.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Use sand [1] instead of water and you'll be able to store a lot
| more energy in a limited area. Water can't be heated above
| 98degC at atmospheric pressure which puts a limit on how much
| energy can be stored per m3 while sand can be heated above
| 1000degC without problems. Add enough insulation and you'll be
| able to store enough heat to warm your house through the long
| winter. Sand is cheap, non-corrosive and doesn't freeze or boil
| [2]. The specific heat for sand (830 J/g K) is markedly lower
| than that for water (4000 J/g K) but the density is ~50%
| higher. Together with the much higher temperature spectrum this
| translates to a higher capacity per m3.
|
| [1] https://polarnightenergy.fi/technology
|
| [2] it _can_ boil - silicon boils at 3265degC - but it is hard
| to see how such a temperature can be reached
| flaviut wrote:
| Residential water heaters, at least in the USA, don't
| typically go above 60degC. So there's room to grow here, at
| least for now, without building a more exotic, and therefore
| expensive, system.
| tpm wrote:
| And the reason they don't go much higher could be that at
| higher temps water hardness starts depositing water stone
| on the heating element and lining.
| goodpoint wrote:
| There's nothing exotic in a storage heater. They've been
| extremely common in UK for many decades.
|
| A resistor, some bricks and some insulation. If anything
| they are too rudimentary.
| skeptically wrote:
| wongarsu wrote:
| > doesn't freeze
|
| In the sense that something that is frozen can't freeze.
| Apparently the melting point of sand is about 1700degC, so
| 1000degC sand indeed should handle about the same as 20degC
| sand or -100degC sand. That does sound rater neat for a large
| scale setup.
|
| In a small-scale setup the convection currents, easy handling
| and lower insulation requirements of a water setup would
| probably still win out.
| fpoling wrote:
| If water tank holds water above 70C, it's safety
| requirements make it significantly more expensive. Plus
| water close to the boiling temperature is rather corrosive.
| So I cannot rule out that even for small scale sand setup
| will be cheaper.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Smart demand management hasn't been rolled out because there
| are many different people involved who would _all_ like to
| pocket the profits.
|
| Eg. a tesla plugged in at 6pm could shift it's charging time to
| earn quite a profit on the realtime-priced wholesale
| electricity markets.
|
| * Tesla et al (the company) would like to make that money - in
| the lifetime of a car, it could be tens of thousands of
| dollars. They propose to do it with 'virtual power plants'
| which can make/use power and trade on the power market.
|
| * The homeowner would like to make that money too. Through the
| use of manually setting timers to use power at cheaper times
| and having a peak/off-peak plan.
|
| * The electricity distributor would like to make that money -
| by mandating that devices like cars and water heaters be
| remotely controllable by them, so that they can buy less of the
| most expensive power generation.
|
| * Electricity generators would like to make that money too - by
| _not_ doing any demand management, prices vary more widely, and
| they get big profits when they can spin up gas turbines to
| cover that peak demand.
|
| Technically, none of the above ideas are hard to implement -
| but each party blocks policies and rules that move in the
| direction of someone else making the money.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| SRP in Phoenix Arizona has a form of this, I'm currently
| switching to it.
|
| They have peak/off-peak rates with an additional monthly fee
| based off your maximum kilowatt usage in any 30minute on-peak
| interval. They also integrate with an ecobee thermostat (and
| give a $100 credit for buying them - just got two for $50 a
| piece) and will automatically adjust your thermostat up by at
| most 4 degrees during on-peak conservation events where
| demand is spiking in the valley. They can even pre-cool your
| house by 2 degrees prior to the event on off-peak rates to
| try and comfortably get you through the conservation event.
|
| I've configured my pool pump to turn off during peak hours
| and will avoid doing dishes and laundry during peak. I
| imported last years hourly usage into spreadsheet and ran the
| numbers. If my math is right, I should save on average
| between $100 and $200 per month on electric (I've had winter
| bills as low as $150 and summer bills as high as $750!).
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I can't imagine wasting that much water by having a pool in
| Phoenix, insane
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depends how well they cover it (temporarily with a cover
| or permanently with a gable/roof or completely indoor
| pool). Transpiration from lawn grass will evaporate a
| similar amount of water as an outdoor uncovered pool. At
| least they don't have to worry about heating it in AZ.
| Ideally their air conditioner would dump heat into the
| pool for any heating (no idea if pool heaters are a thing
| in AZ).
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| No cover due to its odd shape. During summer months I use
| evaporative cooling to keep the pool cool enough to swim.
| To do this, we intentionally run the water feature to
| increase the evaporation rate - evaporating water takes
| the higher energy water molecules and ejects them from
| the pool reducing the temp.
|
| We also use a pool heater about 3 months out of the year.
| Never considered the A/C condenser as a heater. Initial
| thought is that the time of year you need to heat the
| pool is the time of year you aren't running your A/C.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I don't (currently) think water is wasted in any
| meaningful way by my swimming pool. When it evaporates it
| turns to water vapor. Then it comes back down as liquid
| water when it rains. There is an argument that we put
| extra work into this water to transport it and make it
| potable - but PHX's water is positive sum. Water demand
| in the valley is accounted for during construction and
| sourcing it is part of the project cost. I'm also
| prepared to pay the cost of continued sourcing of water
| over time as the valley grows - including projects like
| desalination.
| bumby wrote:
| What is your $/kwh rate? I've also been a resident of the
| desert southwest, but that bill seems insane, about 5x what
| my bills were. At the time, I think we were paying around
| $0.13/kwh peak and $0.09/kwh off-peak. You may just have a
| much nicer/bigger spread, though
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I'm currently on the Basic Plan:
| https://www.srpnet.com/prices/home/basic.aspx
|
| Between $0.0829 and $0.1299 depending on peak/off-peak
| and seasonal. 3k sq ft house built in 2004.
|
| Switching to their Time Of Use Demand plan, which it
| doesn't seem like they have a public page for. It's
| substantially cheaper per kwh than TOU - as low as $0.03
| - but they have a few for your peak demand in the month
| as high as $0.17 per excess kw.
| schiffern wrote:
| Insightful post.
|
| I've long suspected that the most viable path ( _only_ viable
| path?) is for Tesla to capture the profits and share a
| percentage with the equipment owner.
|
| Since the payoff to the homeowner happens "in front of the
| meter," it gets around the bureaucratic nightmare of fixing
| the perverse incentives in electricity pricing (eg the flat
| rate problem /u/rr808 mentions). All you need is one large
| aggregator to participate in the real-time wholesale market,
| issue commands to the "fleet," and divvy up the profits.
| andrepd wrote:
| > is for Tesla to capture the profits and trickle down some
| crumbs to the equipment owner.
|
| Capitalist labour relations, but now with your car
| manufacturer :)
| maxerickson wrote:
| Tesla could make an open API at just let whoever capture
| the profits.
|
| Then owners could group together on their own terms to get
| market power.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I hate navigating utilities as it is, now I need to
| join/form a co-op just to use my car?
|
| I don't know man. This sounds awful. Like an even worse
| HOA. Unless I'm misunderstanding your concept here.
| maxerickson wrote:
| No, do what you want, stick with giving Tesla thousands
| of dollars a year instead of opting into the coop that
| runs the simple algorithm and gives you the money.
| schiffern wrote:
| What makes you think a "simple algorithm" from a cash-
| strapped coop can compete with more sophisticated
| systems?
|
| If better systems (eg Tesla's Autobidder) generate more
| revenue, then even after paying a percentage you still
| come out ahead.
|
| Meanwhile an under-sophisticated algorithm will just end
| up being the "dumb money" in the marketplace.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The algorithm isn't awfully complex. If it's 6pm, and you
| need your car charged by 6am, and you need to be charging
| for 6 hours, then you just purchase the cheapest 6 energy
| futures for the 6 hours you know you'll need, and don't
| purchase the other 6.
|
| If at any time during the night the prices of the
| unpurchased futures drop below that of the ones you have
| purchased, you can sell one and buy a different one
| (rescheduling the charge).
|
| There isn't any better algorithm within those
| constraints. As long as the energy futures market is a
| fully liquid market, the price you'll get will be (on
| average) equal to the spot price you would have paid if
| you'd made the ideal scheduling decisions and bought on
| the spot market.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm specifically saying this "energy HOA" sounds
| miserable/time-consuming just to run my car, and if
| people immediately have a negative reaction like that
| then the "solution" is potentially very flawed, if for no
| other reason than it hurts adoption. There's no need to
| get so hostile over a simple critique. I also don't think
| it's reasonable to assume a "simple algorithm" will solve
| this.
|
| For the record, I don't own a Tesla and I don't want to.
| I have no plans of giving Elon Musk any of my business.
| schiffern wrote:
| >Tesla could make an open API at just let whoever capture
| the profits.
|
| Presumably this is supposed to be different from what I
| said (sharing profits), so are you suggesting the service
| provider should take 0%?
|
| >Then owners could group together on their own terms to
| get market power.
|
| Thats precisely the part consumers _don 't_ want to do
| (and where Tesla can add value): aggregation and
| Autobidder.
| maxerickson wrote:
| API on the car, not on the service. A way for the owner
| of the car to control what the car is doing remotely.
|
| If there are thousands of dollars on the line, third
| parties will bid against Tesla...
| YZF wrote:
| I think the API already exists since you can use the
| phone app (e.g.) to control charging. I haven't looked at
| this for some time but while the API isn't/wasn't open
| it's been reverse engineered and I think there's an
| ecosystem using those APIs (not for this purpose but for
| other purposes).
|
| EDIT: I think in my location all that has to happen for
| demand to shift is for the power company (BC Hyrdo in
| this case) to offer different rates. They can do this
| statically or dynamically and one way or another things
| will shift. As a person I can figure out to charge my car
| or heat my house/water or whatnot for a lower cost. I
| don't think they care.
| abraae wrote:
| Your edit is on the money.
|
| We switched to a new power company purely based on rates.
| They offer free power for a 3 hour slot between 9pm and
| midnight.
|
| We spent $2k on hardware to take advantage - a 7kw fast
| charger for the EV and a clockwork timer for the water
| tank.
|
| In return we could load shift so much that 45% of our
| power is now free. That's with no other behavior changes
| (well one small change - family members became aware that
| having long hot showers in the day meant a lukewarm
| shower at night).
|
| All super simple, and all driven from the bottom up by
| specific rates.
| zbrozek wrote:
| That sounds pretty great. I can't imagine my utility,
| PG&E, doing the same. Their TOU rates start at about the
| same as their tiered rates and go up from there. Even
| under maximal load shifting that plan costs me more than
| the simpler (yet still complicated) plan.
|
| Instead it's more economical for me to drive my grid
| dependence to zero. I'm one of the "no thanks" folks in
| the article.
| schiffern wrote:
| This is exactly the perverse pricing problem that Tesla
| (or someone else) can easily solve with
| aggregation+Autobidder.
|
| Tesla knows your utility rate, including the absence or
| presence of time-of-use billing. They also have access to
| the real-time market behind the meter. In this position,
| they can always Do The Right Thing to minimize total cost
| of EV charging (electric bill minus earned Autobidder
| revenue).
| abraae wrote:
| It's fascinating how the economics play out. Thanks to
| this deal, it no longer makes sense for us to go solar or
| to have a house battery. So the power company has us as a
| loyal customer (at least, while they keep offering this
| deal).
| schiffern wrote:
| Thanks. Yes, a more open car API would be welcome.
|
| For V1G (ie one-way demand response charging), I'd prefer
| cars also have a Set It And Forget It option:
|
| _Always charge immediately to [ 30% ], then charge to [
| 80% ] by [ 7 AM ] [ weekdays ]._
|
| And then it just Does The Right Thing.
|
| For configuring stationary batteries, the equivalent
| would be:
|
| _Always reserve [ 40% ] backup, then trade with the grid
| when payout exceeds [ 20C/ /kWh ]._
|
| Current generation Tesla systems allow some of this
| configuration, but not all.
| goodpoint wrote:
| People are usually aware of Big Oil but often forget that
| power generation and distribution companies also have they
| own interests (and are able to buy politicians).
|
| Unsurprisingly, they dislike distributed/democratized power
| generation and storage.
|
| > shift it's charging time
|
| *its
| robocat wrote:
| A market that works properly depends on electricity market
| design[1], and the design of regulations for the network, the
| generators, and the consumers. Each country has solved this
| in their own way, some networks have successful regulations
| and some don't. I live in New Zealand and the market[2] works
| okay (although it helps that NZ is reasonably functional
| compared to many other countries).
|
| The network/grid infrastructure is mostly a natural monopoly:
| infrastructure which requires communal long-term goals via
| regulations and the infrastructure cannot be run as a normal
| pure-profit business.
|
| Generators and consumers need an electricity market designed
| to meet capacity and other[3] goals (link mentions: Ancillary
| Services, Frequency Keeping, Over-frequency reserve,
| Instantaneous reserve, Black Start, Voltage support,
| Automatic Under Frequency Load Shedding (AUFLS), Dispatch-
| Capable Load Station Setup, Frequency Keeper Selection,
| Infeasibilities, Load Forecasting, Offer and Bid Setup,
| Scheduling and Dispatch, etcetera).
|
| I like your point. It is hard to design regulations to avoid
| the monopoly capture your examples show, and how to have a
| functional regulator that isn't captured, and a market that
| encourages participants to develop functioning systems. Tesla
| needs some incentive to build and maintain a system to
| optimise charging schedules and load shedding.
|
| [1] https://www.nera.com/practice-areas/energy/energy-market-
| des...
|
| [2] https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-
| natu...
|
| [3] https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/electricity-
| mar...
| jakewins wrote:
| Hasn't been rolled out in the _US_ , although that's shifting
| as well. My employer (Tibber) have hundreds of thousands of
| paying customers in EU, and the bulk of the pitch is that we
| smart-schedule your EV and home heating to hit low prices,
| and sell ancillary services (eg. stop your charger for ~15s
| to help grid do frequency control).
|
| While people may argue over who should get what slice of the
| pie, I think the situation in Europe has already answered
| that: you, the owner of the EV and charger or heat pump, get
| the pie.
|
| I think Tibbers business model is good here: We charge a flat
| (~$5) monthly fee to smart-schedule your assets and buy
| electricity for you, and then you get ~100% of the profit
| from your demand-responsive asset. We also make some money if
| you spend less $$ on energy, since we settle daily with
| producers, but monthly with you, so lower cost of financing
| if you spend less.
|
| The major blocker to more demand response, at least in EU, is
| the pace at which countries (looking at you Germany) roll out
| meters capable of hourly remote reading.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't have skin in the game but the electromechanical
| computers of the previous eras were all superb and solid yet
| digital electronics wiped the market away. Making a simple
| analogy (sic) I'd say the smart grid thing might be a glimpse
| of where society is going. Or it might be a marketing fad.
| rr808 wrote:
| With modern technology there are much more interesting things
| you can do, esp if you combine with battery storage and real
| time pricing.
|
| One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat rate
| all the time. There is no incentive for people not to use
| electricity during those huge peaks which really drives
| generation costs. Ideally people would not cook/clean/heat
| water/charge anything during those hot summer afternoons or
| cold dark windless evenings. Your electric water heater is a
| good example of it could be saving costs by charging when its
| windy/sunny/low demand periods and even better lower water
| temperature so wont be so hot when prices are high. Smart EV
| charging is even more important, if you leave the car plugged
| in every night, but with logic so some hours it'll charge
| quickly and maybe some nights not at all.
| viraptor wrote:
| > There is no incentive for people not to use electricity
| during those huge peaks
|
| Is that documented / true on a large scale? Anecdotally, I
| know a few people who turn on the clothes dryer, dishwasher,
| etc. at night or schedule the washing machine to start at 5am
| to run them on the lower tariff period. Maybe it's not very
| common though.
| avianlyric wrote:
| You've missed the previous sentence.
|
| > One of the main issues is that for residential pays a
| _flat rate all the time_. There is no incentive for people
| not to use electricity during those huge peaks
|
| I've you've got a lower rate at night, then you _dont't_
| have flat rate tariff. Something very common in most of the
| world. Having a lower night rate means you obviously have
| an incentive, that's the entire reason it's offered.
| rr808 wrote:
| Every country and plan seems different. For everyone in my
| city we have a flat price all month.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Depends on the utility/state. Some have different rates
| depending on time of day. Where I live does not. We pay a
| straight per kwh rate regardless of when used and how
| "spikey" our pattern is. The total per month is segregated
| into tiers, so the per kwh rate is incrementally higher as
| your total consumption climbs.
| landemva wrote:
| This is a good description of electric rate tariff which
| is becoming more prevalent in USA. It depends on what
| rate tariffs are approved by the regulator.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ontario Canada found that residential Time of Use (TOU)
| billing only shifted demand by 3% at the beginning of
| rollout, diminishing to 1% shifting in subsequent years.
| And "little evidence of conservation".
|
| Figure ES1, Pg 8:
|
| https://www.brattle.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/10/7289_anal...
|
| And "General service class [IE: commercial] customers show
| little evidence of load shifting behavior and are less
| responsive to the TOU prices than residential customers.
| However, general service class customers show some mixed
| evidence of conservation, although this is still marginal."
|
| But they don't like to publish this info much. Smart meters
| were controversial (from it's giving me headaches, to this
| costs a lot of money for ? benefit over regular metering).
|
| Electric utility pricing is regulated to be based on Return
| on Equity, so if they could increase their capital base
| through smart meter infra and cut the opex of meter
| readers, it economically benefits the utility, but not the
| consumer.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Does it matter? At least people are paying the right
| price for power, and it gives those who need it the
| ability to save money by shifting demand.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also depending on residential they might not care about
| price. Like I don't. I live in apartment. So best I can do is
| choose some activities. And even then I could save what
| couple dozen euros? Maximum of hundred? Just easier to not
| really have the mental load to think about it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yeah, I lived in a rental apartment where they wanted to
| rebate the average electricity cost and run the metered
| electricity scam. But at a ~$40 rent reduction and a
| $13/month account fee, you'd have to reduce your
| electricity consumption to 33% below average just to break
| even.
|
| All so the installer/metering provider can buy a bigger
| yacht.
|
| Hard to do conserve much when the apartment operator
| provides your major appliances (typical in north america),
| no dishwasher, laundry is in a central laundry room, and
| HVAC+hot water are centrally provided.
|
| Would do a lot better if they just ran a program to replace
| all of our light bulbs/fixtures.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat
| rate all the time._
|
| One of the problems with real-time energy pricing is: poor
| people don't have the cash on hand to replace their furnaces
| or upgrade their insulation- or worse yet rent and can't
| improve energy efficiency at all.
|
| It's difficult to raise prices enough to make it economically
| rational for middle class types to get batteries and heat
| pumps without reducing the poor to poverty.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Yep, or worse the real-time energy pricing causes the
| highest prices during weather crises introducing ethical
| issues, such as during the 2021 Texas Winter Storm on
| customers using real-time energy pricing plans: https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis#Power_...
|
| Sometimes consumer smart grid gets evangelized as 'the
| fourth industrial revolution' - Dr. Simon Michaux argues
| the material blindness of it in such a way that only the
| rich may experience it :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pt3ioQuNc&t=625s ( Dr.
| Simon Michaux: "Minerals and Materials Blindness" | The
| Great Simplification #19 with Nate Hagens ).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You could just cap the max price and let the grid make it
| up during other times. That's basically what time of day
| billing does anyway: a blended approach to electricity
| rates that averages out but provides some incentive.
|
| Of course, my jurisdiction rolled out time-of-day billing
| and found that demand shifted only a few percent, so I
| wonder if the program even covered its costs for smaller
| users.
| mrexroad wrote:
| And the funded programs which offer rebates for upgrades
| are a pain to navigate, even if you know they exist. Even
| if you overcome the awareness, procedures, etc. hurdles,
| the financial relief (rebate) is often too delayed to
| affect decision making when struggling financially.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| I don't expect zero energy costs to arrive at the consumers.
| Prices will artificially be inflated based on demand. The
| only way for consumers to profit will be to not play the game
| and go as much off grid as possible. But then you explicitly
| do not need smart meters.
| landemva wrote:
| Going off grid typically costs more and is often less
| reliable. It's not zero cost.
| zrail wrote:
| Most residential plans in the US are either time of day rates
| or are a tiered flat rate.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There was an electricity provider in Texas that charged
| market rate plus a small markup. They were crucified when
| the freeze happened last year and they continued to charge
| market rate plus a small markup. They also went bankrupt.
| zrail wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I said "most". Texas is an especially
| weird case because of their almost total lack of
| regulation around pricing. From what I gather there were
| actually a number of power providers in Texas that
| charged cost plus. I don't know if any of them still
| exist but I'm sure there's demand for it because it's
| such a good deal most of the time.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So, there are two problems:
|
| 1. When the price of power went up, everyone
| spontaneously decided that charging the market rate for
| power was evil and the company deserved to be destroyed.
|
| 2. The company delivered a lot of power at high market
| rates because customers demanded it. But those customers
| then refused to pay (and in many cases weren't able to
| pay), which is why the company went bankrupt.
|
| It doesn't matter so much that there's demand if the
| government and the population all hate you and you can't
| collect the money you're theoretically owed.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > _residential pays a flat rate all the time_
|
| Only true for _some countries_.
|
| Denmark has a mix of flat rate and hour-based variable rates.
| In my case prices are often 3 timers higher in "rush hours"
| (typically weekdays 5pm to 8pm, 17:00-20:00) than during a
| midday in a weekend with a lot of wind.
|
| I cannot choose flat-rate due to the situation in Ukraine.
|
| edit: This map is very good to see the price and source of
| electricity in Europe (and how well the countries are
| interconnected): https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DK-DK1
| rr808 wrote:
| Yes Denmark is a great example of high proportion of Wind
| power where it could make a big difference. I'm not sure
| what the hour-based variable rates are - do you know what
| the price is so you can change usage? Is power free or very
| cheap on windy days?
| silvestrov wrote:
| On windy days the price can go to zero, so you only pay
| the fixed tax.
|
| I can log into my provider at see the price for previous
| days and for tomorrow.
| rr808 wrote:
| Tomorrow, that's cool. Its the whole point to be able to
| adjust your usage based on the market. I was thinking
| appliances can be smart enough to get the pricing to
| adjust usage, but if you can see tomorrow you can adjust
| your life yourself.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| The GB grid has half-hourly pricing for retail customers
| (with a cap and floor to prevent exposure to full wholesale
| risk i.e. not like those Gridly clowns in Texas).
| [deleted]
| blablabla123 wrote:
| That would be especially interesting for hours with negative
| energy prices (at least once they become accessible for retail
| customers). Also various appliances like washing machines or
| dish washers can be timed
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Also various appliances like washing machines or dish
| washers can be timed
|
| In theory. Then the fire department comes and says "do _not_
| run washing machines and dish washers while you 're asleep or
| away". And with that you're back to running them during peak
| hours.
|
| We just had that discussion in the media here, due to the
| introduction of peak power as a part of the electricity bill.
| nine_k wrote:
| Where does this happen? Also, how do they know?
| michaelt wrote:
| Presumably the fire department is merely offering advice,
| because they've been called out to dryer fires. And
| they're the fire department, not the energy efficiency
| department.
| salawat wrote:
| You will be surprised how often disembarkations in the
| electrical space go hand in hand with a potential
| embarkation into the fire space.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Here's some semi-random news articles regarding this:
|
| https://www.nrk.no/livsstil/advarer-mot-oppvaskmaskin-om-
| nat...
|
| https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/bonn-fra-brannsjefen-i-
| fredri...
|
| They know because they have to put out the fire in the
| middle of the night, and they do an investigation
| afterwards to determine the cause of the fire so they
| know it was e.g. the washing machine.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also insurance companies. Your home insurance might cover
| water damage from appliance going wrong, but if you aren't
| present or sleeping they might try to get out of it... And
| single bigger leak will waste any gains from price savings
| for years or forever...
| jamesvandyne wrote:
| At Octopus Energy, I think we've made negative prices
| available to retail customers (at least in the UK, not sure
| about the other countries we're retailing in).
|
| People getting paid to charge their cars because the grid has
| a surplus of (probably green) energy.
| jonatron wrote:
| The most recent in the UK was 11 June, I can confirm I had
| a negative rate for a few hours then.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I just want to compliment Octopus Energy, I just tried
| popping over for a quote, and the website just says "No.
| You don't want to switch right now". Not sure if this is
| common with other energy suppliers, but it looks good (I'll
| remember for when/if I do end up switching next).
| pydry wrote:
| Everybody I know with an electric car has this tarriff.
|
| One of them is trying to install a heat pump too to double
| down on this approach.
|
| It rarely gets discussed in the media for some reason.
| maxhille wrote:
| Berlin is building this in a somewhat bigger version
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/vattenfall-starts-filling-up...
| landemva wrote:
| I was recently looking for the address of this build. Anyone
| know it?
| _1tan wrote:
| Here (use Google translate):
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heizkraftwerk_Reuter_West
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Water tank and water pipe analogies fail pretty fast when it
| comes to thinking about electricity. Keeping grids energized by
| real-time management of supply and demand is not much like
| keeping water or gas flowing through pipes.
|
| If you want to examine smart grids, it's strange to ignore what's
| been developed in Germany and NW Europe over several decades. A
| lot of this revolves around fast communication strategies and
| supply/demand prediction algorithms:
|
| https://eu.landisgyr.com/blog/grid-control-the-future-of-the...
|
| > "To be able to operate this complex solution infrastructure,
| Netze BW has applied a so called "traffic light concept". The
| green light indicates that no congestion is predicted, while the
| yellow light is a sign of a potential bottleneck in the grid that
| might require certain restrictive measures by the market players.
| For example, a Virtual Power Plant operator would adjust the
| operating mode of its storage and generation assets to avoid
| predicted transformer overload. However, despite these actions
| taken during the yellow phase, the actual technical limits of the
| electricity network might still be violated in real time due to
| unforeseen events. In this case, the red light would call for
| immediate mitigation measures enabled automatically by the REMS
| system."
| chestertn wrote:
| > Water tank and water pipe analogies fail pretty fast when it
| comes to thinking about electricity.
|
| In what ways does this analogy fail, for the purposes of
| understanding power grids?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Well, for one, if you get low pressure in one set of water
| pipes the entire water grid doesn't attempt to collapse
| because it goes out of sync.
|
| The grid is a gigantic clock that at least in the US is
| running at 60 ticks per second. This is pretty easy to manage
| if you have some massive power source on it like gigantic
| turbines at a nuclear power plant. All your small clocks
| aren't going to push that around so much.
|
| The problems come in when all you have is small clocks, who
| sets the phase of the grid?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2020/inertia-and-the-
| power...
|
| > "We find that replacing conventional generators with
| inverter-based resources, including wind, solar PV, and
| certain types of energy storage, has two counterbalancing
| effects," said Paul Denholm, NREL principal energy analyst
| and lead author of the guide. "First, it's true that these
| resources decrease the amount of inertia available on the
| system. But second, these resources can reduce the amount
| of inertia actually needed
|
| > "Ultimately, although growth in inverter-based resources
| will reduce the amount of inertia on the grid, there are
| multiple existing or possible solutions for maintaining or
| improving system reliability," Denholm said. "So, declines
| in inertia do not pose significant technical or economic
| barriers to significant growth in wind, solar, and storage
| to well beyond today's levels for most of the United
| States."
| throwaway52022 wrote:
| The NREL inertia video explainer felt a little like it
| was begging the question - "inertia protects the grid
| because it has inertia and keeps spinning" - it doesn't
| quite feel like it explains where the extra energy comes
| from or goes, just that the mass keeps spinning. (I also
| haven't had a physics class in a long long time so some
| of this is not obvious to me, except that I understand
| from just common sense that if something's spinning you
| had to put a bunch of energy into getting it going in the
| first place and it's going to keep going if left on its
| own)
|
| Anyway, I was hoping someone could fill in some details
| for me. Imagine a simplified grid: a dam that sends water
| through a penstock past a turbine/generator and into an
| electrical circuit, and a couple of resistance heaters on
| the other side of the circuit. The energy comes from
| water flowing through the dam - the dam operator opens up
| the sluice gate to let water flow through, the generator
| extracts the mechanical energy and turns it into
| electrical energy and it goes down the wire to the
| resistance heater where it gets turned into heat energy.
| Everything is balanced - the right amount of water is
| flowing through the dam to turn the turbine at the right
| speed to balance out all of the energy flowing through
| the wires and into the resistance heaters (and lost along
| the way, like losses in the transmission lines, etc). In
| this setup, there's some measure of pressure that turbine
| pushes back against the water flowing through the
| penstock of the dam, which is balanced out by how much
| pressure is coming from the water behind the dam and the
| pressure being put on the surface area of the penstock in
| the dam and the pressure being relieved by the water
| leaving the dam.
|
| I get that thanks to inertia, if the sluice gate
| accidentally slams shut and all water stops flowing
| through the dam, the turbine is going to keep spinning
| for a bit and energy is going to keep going out onto the
| grid, though it will start to slow down due to friction
| at the turbine and energy being extracted from the system
| by the resistance heaters on the other end of the grid.
|
| What I'm less clear about is how does inertia help when
| the water keeps flowing at the regular speed but when
| demand drops from the grid load. Let's say one of the
| resistance heaters turns off in a home somewhere - what
| happens to the energy from the water that was previously
| flowing into the grid via the turbine? Does the inertia
| in the spinning of the turbine somehow push back against
| the water flowing the dam, slowing the water down a
| bit/building pressure up in the penstock and behind the
| dam - with that pressure buildup being exactly equal to
| the energy that used to be going into the resistance
| heater? And that pressure either stays built up from the
| turbine until someone lowers the sluice gate a bit to cut
| back on the waterflow through the dam? Or does nothing
| involving inertia happen here - if the resistance heater
| gets turned off the overall load is reduced and the
| turbine spins a bit faster because there's less pushing
| back on it, and the water can move through the dam a bit
| faster, and the turbine just spins faster until someone
| notices it's going a bit too fast and the gate needs to
| be lowered so it drops back to rotating at 60hz?
|
| Similarly, if someone turns on another resistance heater
| and now more energy is needed on the grid, but the sluice
| gate isn't opened up immediately, is inertia involved
| here somehow? If the turbine has to push harder on the
| grid side because of extra load, presumably the turbine
| slows down? Or does the turbine get pulled along by the
| new load somehow (more inertia?), and so more water can
| push past the turbine, giving it the extra energy it
| needs (and presumably dropping the water pressure in the
| penstock in the dam? And the pressure stays low until the
| sluice gate is opened up a bit more and more water can
| flow through the dam?)
|
| I am using water pressure from a dam here, but I assume
| this would be equally true in a gas plant generating
| steam - if more energy is needed, the pressure in the
| steam drops until someone turns up the burner and creates
| more steam, etc, or if less steam is needed the pressure
| just builds up until someone notices and turns down the
| burner?
|
| If anyone can explain how inertia and the grid translates
| into changes in the actual source of energy, I'd much
| appreciate it!
| chestertn wrote:
| In the pipes analogy, pressure corresponds to potential
| energy (voltage). Low voltage conditions does not
| necessarily trigger frequency stability issues.
|
| Grid synchronization is a different issue to the
| electrical-hydraulic analogy (which, by the way, was the
| one that Maxwell used and its pretty useful). Grid
| synchronization comes from the fact that electrical
| quantities in the network (current, voltage) are
| alternating periodic. Generators, which are usually
| mechanical, oscillate and induce such periodic signals. The
| system must remain synchronized. But this has nothing to do
| with the network being electrical.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy
| Nasrudith wrote:
| For one the "water" moves near light speed effectively and
| tanks andand reservoirs are far more expensive, and gravity
| doesn't meaningfully apply. And there is some leakage with
| distance. And you cannot use a turbine to generate water from
| torque. Even if many equation structures are the same as
| fluid mechanics the assumptions break from differences.
| chestertn wrote:
| > The "water" moves near light speed effectively
|
| This is not how the hydraulic analogy works. The "speed" of
| the water is irrelevant. The analogy is used to understand
| losses, energy balance, energy conservation, reactive
| power, etc.
|
| The hydraulic analogy is very sound.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The fact that the AC power grid is synchronous is very unlike
| any water/gas system:
|
| > "In a synchronous grid, all the generators naturally lock
| together electrically and run at the same frequency, and stay
| very nearly in phase with each other...Small deviations from
| the nominal system frequency are very important in regulating
| individual generators and assessing the equilibrium of the
| grid as a whole. When the grid is heavily loaded, the
| frequency slows, and governors adjust their generators so
| that more power is output (droop speed control). When the
| grid is lightly loaded the grid frequency runs above the
| nominal frequency, and this is taken as an indication by
| Automatic Generation Control systems across the network that
| generators should reduce their output."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid#Fre.
| ..
|
| Cascading power grid failures might be another good example:
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aan3184
| chestertn wrote:
| We are talking about electrical water analogies.
|
| Stability issues are beyond the network being electrical
| and correspond to the electromechanical dynamics of the
| grid.
|
| These types of analogies are very sound and well studied
| [1].
|
| Great power engineering books, such as Olle Elgerd's
| Electric Energy System Theory, make extensive use of these.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical-
| electrical_analogie...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The water pipe - electrical circuit analogy is not
| necessarily horrible for DC circuits, but I think it
| becomes an impediment to learning pretty quickly. There's
| no water model that works for things like p-n silicon
| junctions for example.
|
| There's also the fact that transmission of energy by
| fluid in a pipe (sound wave speed I think) isn't anywhere
| near as fast as transmission of energy in a wire by
| electric fields, even though the electrons themselves
| aren't really moving that fast at all in bulk (*drift
| velocity is low). There's a 'pipe full of marbles'
| analogy for that effect, but the actual energy is carried
| by the electric field, not by a flow of electrons as with
| a flow of water through a water turbine. There's also the
| Drude model which treats the electrons as something like
| an ideal gas with electrons scattering off the positive
| metal ions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drude_model
|
| However if you get into band theory of solids as a means
| of explaining conductors, insulators and semiconductors,
| anything related to a water pipe analogy falls apart:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_band_structure
| atoav wrote:
| There are many aspects where the analogy is flawed, when
| talking about the electrical grid, e.g. you will have
| different types of loads (capacitive, resistive,
| inductive) and those loads will change the way your grid
| behaves. This is _not_ something that you have in fluid
| dynamics at all (to my knowledge) yet any grid operator
| who would ignore such things would have their gear just
| explode.
| chestertn wrote:
| A load being inductive, capacitive, or reactive has to do
| with its impedance, which is a concept related to the
| steady-state analysis of AC networks.
|
| The hydraulic analogy easily extends here - just imagine
| water flowing back and forth.
|
| This is well studied [1] and power engineering books make
| use of this analogy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| A specific analogy doesn't have to be used _forever_. You
| can drop it when it starts being problematic.
|
| Asked a different way, what didn't work for the purposes
| of this article? It's at a high enough level that
| "becomes an impediment" isn't really an issue. Nor are
| "p-n silicon junctions". Nor the speed of transmission.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| That's the concern being raised. It's indeed problematic
| to use a water bucket/pipe analogy in an AC grid when
| talking about transmission and generation of _power_ ,
| and related things like spinning reserves. (It's less
| problematic when discussing energy.)
| chestertn wrote:
| The water analogy is perfectly fine to use to talk about
| the bulk AC transmission grid (which is low-frequency
| alternating current).
|
| photochemsyn speaks about how the hydraulic phenomena is
| not adequate to describe some electronic aspects (e.g.,
| modeling p-n silicon junctions). These issues are
| irrelevant to how well the hydraulic analogy works to
| describe the workings of the AC transmission grid.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Meanwhile, there are sporadic reports in Toronto of short power
| outages at 6AM on a regular basis. I suspect it's because power
| pricing switches from night time low to high-peak at 7AM, so many
| people (like me!) have programmed their hard-start Air
| Conditioners to kick in hard at 6AM for an hour leading to
| phantom faults.
|
| 2020 reports:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/askTO/comments/hhdv0o/east_york_alm...
| atwood22 wrote:
| Isn't there a spot market for power? Why are pricing changes
| hard-coded to a specific time?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Not at the residential side in most places. Probably because
| people would find it "too complicated" and are unlikely to
| change their habits anyway, but they deal with it for
| automotive fuel so...
| danans wrote:
| > Small Wind Turbines
|
| > Car companies have been relentlessly making electric motors
| (which generate electricity if spun backward) smaller and
| cheaper. A small wind turbine only has to be cheaper than retail
| electricity rates.
|
| It likely won't be cheaper. Small wind turbines have very high
| levelized cost of energy because:
|
| - The wind at the lower heights they are built at is multiple
| times weaker and also less consistent than the wind that large
| turbines can access.
|
| - The power output of a wind turbine is a function of swept area,
| which is the square of blade length and therefore very limited
| with small turbines.
|
| No matter the efficiency of the generator it can't make power
| that the blades can't capture.
|
| Small wind turbines only make sense in off-grid setups in areas
| with poor solar resources.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Solar panels continue to get better, and storage unit s getting
| cheaper. 140 wh/kg sodium ion will be a game changer for home
| batteries.
|
| Imo the future is more independent home generation while the
| grid is backup and for commercial and ev recharge needs,
| outside of urban areas. That will be a far more resilient
| overall system.
|
| Lcoe of non grid solar is high, but I believe this could be
| greatly improved with federal leadership and incentives. Of
| course that means opposing the power lobby
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| The author mentions demand charges where a substantial part of
| the bill is based on the peak capacity available to you at the
| most congested time rather than energy unit charges. In many
| places, large customers already pay this way.
|
| In France, which has low marginal production but high capacity
| costs due to its nuclear fleet, even residential customers have
| been charged this way for a long time. It's easy to charge anyone
| this way now with smart meters but the way that EDF did it
| historically is that your meter has a circuit breaker set to the
| peak that you've paid for. Go over, the breaker trips and you
| need to reduce load and reset. (Of course there is a safety
| circuit breaker with higher rating as well). If you want more
| capacity, you pay for it and they come and install a bigger
| breaker.
|
| I do think that future electricity networks, energy will be cheap
| most of the time but peak power at congested times will be very
| expensive. That's pretty inevitable with the grid mixes being
| proposed since the grid will be net over-supplied most of the
| time (energy very cheap) and very occasionally undersupplied
| (energy very, very expensive). This asymmetry arises from the
| asymmetry between the economic cost of too much energy (linear
| economic loss to the producer) and too little (non-linear loss to
| everyone). This is intuitive: A grid that has too much energy 1%
| of the time is fine, not enough 1% of the time is three days of
| blackouts a year.
| gz5 wrote:
| >Many proposed projects trigger infrastructure upgrades that cost
| more than the power plant. It hasn't been clear to developers
| which projects will incur these costs, so they spam the ISO with
| many applications. The excess applications mean it takes longer
| for the ISO to run studies. Attempts for ISOs to increase staff
| have struggled as developers poach engineers that can estimate
| what grid upgrade costs will be.
|
| Is digital twin type modeling used? If not, is the problem space
| a good one for digital twin modeling?
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| It is also not clear how to make an electricity grid anti-racist
| [1], and combat the racism inherent in our grids[2].
|
| [1]: https://blog.ucsusa.org/joseph-daniel/should-the-electric-
| gr...
|
| [2]: https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP306.pdf
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for trolling.
|
| Abusing HN like this will get your main account banned as well,
| so please don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| amannm wrote:
| The current market/use-case for "Smart Grid" technologies is in
| replacing the various legacy control system interfaces within
| Plants with a single (IP-based) one for the immediate goal of
| reducing opex through synergies within the Plant and to the edges
| of that Plant operator's owned infrastructures. The next step,
| obviously the hardest part, is establishing and implementing IP-
| based standards that facilitate the realtime brokering of
| inputs/outputs between different, potentially competing
| operators. This is the same issue as the competing/proprietary
| residential IoT standards that have been holding back the "Smart
| Home". This stuff only makes economic sense for vertically-
| integrated players (like Duke Energy) that benefit from the opex
| reduction. Any sort of "value-added" capabilities are only a
| bonus to that opex reduction and aren't enough of an ROI by
| themselves.
| more_corn wrote:
| So the argument is: Smart grid is hard and we suck. Therefore
| stupid grid is way to go?
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| To answer the question directly: No.
|
| Why don't we have a 'smarter' grid then?
|
| it is an economics problem at heart, not a pure technical one.
| Until, the incentives align to solve the issue around big power
| monopoly, smarter regulatory bodies, the tech can't do much.
|
| Arguably, tech might be focused on the wrong side of things. That
| is a much better debate.
| Animats wrote:
| Not a great article. Beta-decay nuclear batteries? Come on.
| They're real, but are low-power devices.[1]
|
| Useful reading: PJM 101.[2] This is a training course from the
| PJM Interconnect, the power grid for the northeastern US. It's
| for people who need to know the basics of how it works.
|
| There's a lot of confusion about how big AC grids distribute
| power. Direction of power transfer is controllable. Capacitors
| and inductors are switched in and out to get a leading or lagging
| phase angle. It's not just everything in parallel.
|
| [1]
| https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/leesona_moos/nuclear_battery...
|
| [2] https://www.pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx
| iancarroll wrote:
| > Most utilities are switching customers to smart meters that
| allow remote disconnection of electricity.
|
| I learned about this 3-6 months ago when PG&E erroneously
| remotely disconnected a large number of people in the Bay Area,
| including my apartment. I walked outside my unit and the entire
| building had power except for me -- the maintenance team was
| mystified and said the meter specific to my apartment reported it
| had been remotely killed.
|
| It was impossible to figure out what had happened, and after many
| hours of vague outage status messages, I was finally able to
| reach the billing department who said they had been fixing this
| issue all day, and they remotely reactivated my meter as I was
| still on the phone with them (they had a whole disclaimer about
| turning it on remotely too).
|
| I got a vague letter and $100 statement credit a month later that
| admitted an issue accidentally cut off a lot of meters, but no
| further details on how or why. Very strange experience and made
| me question the whole smart meter thing.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| baybal2 wrote:
| I finished a project on a smart meter with a remote disconnect
| in late 2021 for an African client.
|
| You would not believe how much more money they began to make
| once they started selling power using scratch cards. It was
| n-times the difference.
|
| People, paradoxically, spend more when they can easily see how
| much they spend.
| userbinator wrote:
| The trend should be clear now, everything that's marketed as
| "smart" isn't for your benefit, but for the $$$ of someone
| else.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I don't understand this sentiment. Utilities already can and
| do sacrificially shut off parts of the grid to prevent
| greater outages, this isn't giving them a capability they
| don't already have except for increased granularity and
| hopefully inconveniencing fewer people.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| More granular targeting is potentially concerning in itself
| depending on your threat model - e.g. if it's only possible
| to attack an entire town, then you're safe as long as any
| actor is not willing to attack the entire town, and likely
| to have allies in your neighbors if they do. If it's
| possible to attack all of the people who I don't like in
| that town specifically, that changes things.
|
| Also, the smart meters do more than just enable remote
| shut-off on a per unit basis, they also allow for more
| granular data capture around your usage patterns throughout
| the day, which someone might not appreciate for a number of
| reasons, e.g. viewing that data as private, or preferring
| flat-rate billing as opposed to the time of day based
| pricing schemes that it enables.
|
| More generally, these sorts of systems are not without
| their advantages, but they are characterized by an increase
| in centralized control and surveillance.
| Ruq wrote:
| This also exposes the risk of hackers (state-sponsored or
| otherwise) to selectively or indiscriminately deny power to
| people just by flipping off their meter(s).
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder do those meters have remote software update. And if
| so when we will see hack where as many as possible of them
| are bricked... Requiring massive operation to reconnect and
| replace each...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Jumper cables: not just for cars!
|
| (don't do this)
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| The architecture of the GB smart grid only allows any given
| meter to be remotely disconnected on certain days. This is to
| make it impossible for an attack to disconnect more than a
| fraction of all meters with any one attack.
| bmitc wrote:
| What is the mechanism by which this is allowed or
| disallowed? Could that also not be hacked?
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