However, the heating element in your dryer doesn't have to be run like that. You start the dryer, and it starts tumbling your clothers with the motor, and blowing some air with the fan, but the heating element can turn on and off in coordination with the rest of your house, and you wouldn't even notice.

Also, most of us run a load just before going to bed, and shuffle it to the dryer in the morning.

Do you care if the washer takes a little while before starting up while you're sleeping? I sure don't.

Not if you care about the longevity of your clothing and mildew in your washer.

I don't know anyone who does this routinely on purpose.

Considering this sophistication will probably not be easy to retrofit onto current devices, a combined, space/energy saving device is a given. As long as the clothes are dry and clean when I need them, I don't care at what time during the night the machine did its job.

With some extra cleverness, it could even negotiate very-short-term (hours) futures on energy prices based on current tendencies and knowledge of future house demand.

Why participate in the future market if one can simply choose to not partipate and get to consume any amount of energy you like at a constant price?

Effectively you'd have built a market with an unlimited option to buy at the monthly-average price. A market like that can't work...

Waiting days? Sure... random-internet-answer(s) seem to hover around 24-48 hours before mildew becomes an issue...

So, sitting over night and then maybe a few hours before the dryer starts (Assuming that, it too, would be on a timer) shouldn't be a major issue.

Also, if you have a front loader, they are extremely prone to growing mildew in the bottom of the rubber gasket. Leaving wet clothes inside makes that much more likely.

Further the once a year useage is going to be drawing a lot of batteries slightly lower at the cost of slightly shorter lifespans not a single bank that's only used once. Plus some emergency back up generators that flip on and use some minimal amount of fuel at hospitals and data centers etc.

PS: One interesting outgrowth from high wind solar production is likely to be fairly accurate models for electricity costs over the next few hours. So, you may be using power sooner if the prediction is a coming price increase.

Automate the washing, drying and folding of clothing.

Automate cooking. And shopping.

And so on. Like self-driving cars.

Then it can be done while you sleep :)

You need fingertips with lots of nerves, and probably thousands of very nuanced motor control paradigms.

Sleep pods (or smart beds as they'll be more likely to be called if invented any time soon) that repair your body and inject you with nutrients, making you feel as good as new when you wake up, to the point of not needing sleep again for a few days.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flus...

Have people told you that you smell funny or just acted weird when you are around?

Of course if washing, trying and ironing would be all integrated and automated then one could do that.

I've never met anyone who does this and the only times it happens is on accident.

I live with hard water, so if I did this my clothes would be starchy and uncomfortable to wear. They have to immediately hit the dryer once the wash cycle finishes. Then - unless I want to wear crinkly clothes - straight to the hangers once the dryer finishes.

I don't do this, but perhaps more relevant, I have never discussed laundry habits with friends, so either a) I am unusually tight lipped about laundry, or b) I have no way to know what "most of us" do, though this seems not to be the norm in apartments I have lived in with shared laundry facilities.

my goodness...

Current safety advice is to not run washing machines when you're asleep.

I guess it's okay if you have very good, loud, fire alarms.

I grew up in Switzerland and the cost incentive to running the dishwasher and washer/dryer at night was significant. Many families changed their behavior as a result.

Yes, it's important o keep a fridge in certain temperature bands. But there;s a lot of timing leeway in those bands, and it's exploitable as a form of energy storage.

An electrical engineer I believe designed that part of the system...

I'm sure with enough IoT you could delay motor start +/-30s across a region to smooth the tip of a load spike, but it sounds very complicated. How would end users be compensated for such a tiny shift in load? Isn't instaneous power demand a martingale process?

It sounds like it would be easier and cheaper to have a few batteries.

Congratulation, you just re-invented the wheel. Do you really fridge builder are that dumb ?