Storage heaters, more efficient refrigerators, smart washers that turn on when electricity is cheap.

I really hope these kinds of things start to increase in popularity, but I think it needs more government intervention for it to happen.

The only really critically necessary government intervention is making sure the grid can handle this.

It would probably help if they mandated smart electric storage heaters on new builds but beyond that I'm not sure you need to do much more.

You can rely on people's self interest to buy a new washing machine that saves them money, for instance.

I was thinking more along the lines of international standards for how the appliance could tell that it was in a period of low electricity pricing.

Also, since green tech often saves fewer actual dollars from a consumer's pocket than the "real" cost of the externalities saved, subsidies and/or eco-friendly certification would also be good.

> I was thinking more along the lines of international standards for how the appliance could tell that it was in a period of low electricity pricing.

The obvious solution to this is grid frequency. It's already a requirement for solar grid tie invertors for example.

Demand shaping generally reduces the peak demand so the grid can usually handle much more power on average than before.

The challenge with this kind of stuff is that capital costs are a big part of the cost for large industrial plants. A plant which is only using 25% of its capacity is going to be unprofitable.

When the biggest input cost is energy you are wrong. A plant that is 10% capacity by running only when energy is cheap is more profitable than a plant at 90% running at whatever energy prices are. (in the real world take my numbers and reduce by 75% - between nights, weekends, and maintenance shutdowns a real industrial plant at 25% capacity is already common)

The company I work for has two plants near each other, where one is run in winter, and one in summer, each producing a different product. The workers alternate between which plant they work at depending on the season. The other plant is shutdown for maintenance. By replacing the conveyor belt every year we ensure production never shuts down unexpectedly while people are working, and this more than makes up for the cost of a factory that is idle half of the year.

We have a lot of factories. The above two plants are not the foundry where we pour iron which I talked about in a different thread.

Without knowing what industry you are talking about it's hard to engage in any meaningful dialog.

It clearly doesn't matter what percentage of the input cost is energy to whether the plant is profitable. So long as that percentage is non-zero there will always be an energy cost at which the total cost to produce is higher than the market price to sell (ask any industry in Texas).

Clearly there are other factors too, in your example it seems like labour costs are very high or perhaps contractual demands on output mean down time is unacceptable.

Input costs and final price are what matter to profitability. The machines are part input cost, but they are spread across many different products, often over years.

The reason an idle machine is bad is because you have to pay interest on the loan (write downs and all that complexity). You also have to pay rent (taxes) on the building they are in. You need to do basic maintenance (HVAC so they don't deteriorate). You need to ensure the machine operator (which might be a rare skill) is available when you put it back to work, which might mean paying the operator to do nothing just so he doesn't find a new job while laid off. All of these raise the input cost of restarting after a long period of being idle - sometimes you are better off scraping the machines and buying new if you need them.

Against that you have demand and ability to store the finished product. Some things can be stored up (just in time calls this bad, but it isn't always a bad thing), while others degrade quickly. Some things your customers will order well in advance so you can plan around demand, while others you get an order for "yesterday" (if only you had a time machine).

Depending on how all of the above work out idle factories have different economics.

I completely agree. This is a bit of a process though, look at how Texans with variable rates responded to extremely high (90 times normal rate) prices: some just said f*ck it and managed to use 10-20K USD electricity in a few days.

For those that still had power, I don't think they were thinking about the price, they were busy trying to make sure their pipes didn't freeze or to find clean drinking water if they already had. And inviting neighbors over that didnt have water or power and maybe had flooding with burst pipes and icicles on the ceiling. A couple blocks from me there were people building trash can fires with people huddled around them and further off in the neighborhood someone froze trying to sleep in their car instead of driving on the frozen roads. I can see skyscrapers from my front lawn, its not like its rural, we just weren't prepared. Lifesaving resources like shelter, heat, water, or medicine for that matter don't play nicely with the free market. Infinite demand...