Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by biased_coin on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:11AM
(#26176133)
Do normal households and small businesses keep track of prices ? Are they able to cap their bills in any way ?
In my country, where I live, the per unit prices are fixed and any increases are announced. I doubt whether people anywhere could keep up with 10-30x changes in prices.
Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by jillesvangurp on Thursday February 18, 2021 @02:21AM
(#26176958)
Smart meters are extremely popular in places that have flexible pricing. And given that electricity is expensive in lots of places, there are lots of home owners and businesses spending lots of money on solutions that help them reduce their energy cost. Even simple things like off peak tariffs can drive stuff like this.
Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now
by dathinab on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:21AM
(#26176212)
As far as I know many electric contacts for end users have fixed prices. (Potentially with some auto price correction every year or so based on averages, but this shouldn't matter for now.)
Given that this are wholesale prices it about how much the company selling electricity to end-users pays for it to (simplified).
It's tempting to single out technologies or particular energy sources here as the problem or solution. But the bottom line is that this is fundamentally a policy failure and not a technical problem. Price incentives and signals are probably part of both the problem and solution here. Although none of that will matter this winter of course.
The long term effect of this kind of price instability becoming a regular thing combined with frequent blackouts are going to be interesting. IMHO it's a great opportunity for technology that is basically proven to be highly effective both in providing grid resilience and cost reductions; i.e. clean tech. Nothing like 10x spikes in bills becoming a regular thing to cause people to look for solutions.