Re:The booming business of knitting together the world’s ele...
by eru on Sunday October 17, 2021 @10:18PM
(#28901627)
> We've seen prices becoming more volatile in later years as our domestic market has become more interconnected with that of continental Europe.
Differences in prices both between locations and over time can be turned into money. The first with cables, the second with batteries. In the process, the arbitrager smooths out the price differences.
Give it a bit of time, and you'll see more stable prices again. (Unless politics throws a spanner in the works, of course.)
> It would be nice to serve base power needs by nuclear power, then use hydro (which can be regulated up and down much faster than thermal power plants) to handle the peaks.
Oh, and don't forget the ability to regulate demand up and down. Plenty of industrial consumers already have contracts like that, and thanks to 'smart' devices, this technology can come to private consumers as well.
Eg assume your short term weather forecasts says that we have plenty of wind now, but there will be a lull in fifteen minutes. So you just tell all the fridges and hot water tanks to cool respectively heat now, so they have some stored thermal energy to get over the lull. Similarly for electric cars charging (you don't even have to take energy out of their batteries back into the grid, it's already useful to be able to suspend their charging for a while and resume later).
This is mostly not a problem of high technology, but a problem of coordination.
In principle, you also don't need your power company to directly talk to your fridge: whatever controls your home just needs a short term forecast of electricity prices in the next few hours, and can then decide autonomously and in harmony with your preferences.
Differences in prices both between locations and over time can be turned into money. The first with cables, the second with batteries. In the process, the arbitrager smooths out the price differences.
Give it a bit of time, and you'll see more stable prices again. (Unless politics throws a spanner in the works, of course.)
> It would be nice to serve base power needs by nuclear power, then use hydro (which can be regulated up and down much faster than thermal power plants) to handle the peaks.
Oh, and don't forget the ability to regulate demand up and down. Plenty of industrial consumers already have contracts like that, and thanks to 'smart' devices, this technology can come to private consumers as well.
Eg assume your short term weather forecasts says that we have plenty of wind now, but there will be a lull in fifteen minutes. So you just tell all the fridges and hot water tanks to cool respectively heat now, so they have some stored thermal energy to get over the lull. Similarly for electric cars charging (you don't even have to take energy out of their batteries back into the grid, it's already useful to be able to suspend their charging for a while and resume later).
This is mostly not a problem of high technology, but a problem of coordination.
In principle, you also don't need your power company to directly talk to your fridge: whatever controls your home just needs a short term forecast of electricity prices in the next few hours, and can then decide autonomously and in harmony with your preferences.