A self-resetting breaker at the power box in the street rated for 10A (220V) or so?

There will always be some cheaters and “lifehack - do this dangerous wiring and keep the wifi on” but in general people leave things alone.

We already have interconnect devices for A/C and water heating and car charging in some locations.

A blackout is not just "someone shutting off your lights". It means the grid is down. And to bring the grid back up, there is a lot of effort (and energy use). If you're lucky the part of the grid with problems is just separated from the rest, but if you get 2-3 zones separated, you might end up with islands and then it will take hours and maybe days to bring it back up. Bringing up the grid from a blackout might not be possible/hard with a majority renewable power in the grid - the power source is just not reliable enough, for example the wind might stop blowing when you need the power to connect with the neighbouring region and obtain frequency sync.

Charge higher rates for essential. Offer rebates for certain users with life safety requirements for uninterrupted power.

> Charge higher rates for essential.

This makes ZERO sense..

I live in a cold climate.. Our furnace is "essential" to prevent my family and i from freezing to death. Under your plan we should pay more for this?

And those who cant afford it? Let me guess, government rebates, making a complex program even more complex?

Any time your solution requires "rebates".. it is flawed from the start.

You can also write “Charge higher rates for essential” as “Offer cheaper electricity that has lower quality of service guarantees”.

If seen that way, you wouldn’t pay more; you would have to he choice to get cheaper electricity.

I foresee high demand for electronics that seamlessly switch from the lower quality of service feed to the ‘essential’ one when that cheaper feed stops working, though.

You could have tarrif rules that the essential meter charges at the regular rate if the regular meter is energized, or near the regular rate. That would have the benefit of letting the power utility accurately forecast the essential load, and would disincentivize the transfer switches.

It would make sense to have say your stage 1 heating that could keep your house livable but rather cold on essential, and your stage 2 heating which made things comfortable on the less available feed. I'd also put refrigerators and minimal lighting on essential.

The alternative as presented was some sort of compliance program hoping people wouldn't just run everything off the 'essential' feed regardless of need, or rolling blackouts as currently practiced.

It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?

> It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?

what does taking what i wrote, then reworking the sentence to suit your purpose serve?

I did not agree that essential loads have more "value"... you did.

If you think that heating your home is not essential, come by in the winter and i can put a tent in the back yard for you. It reaches as low as -24C, but i'm sure you will be fine.

If you think that people should be forced to pay more to heat their homes.. you are mistaken. No one should have to choose between food and heat and any program structured such that "essential costs more" will NEVER work.

I said that it is UNFAIR to charge more for essential loads, and that if a program depends on "rebates" it is flawed.

There are many other alternative solutions, such as what we have here via "time of use" billing that is also seasonally adjusted.

this "pay more for essential services" logic is severely flawed, much as you twisting my words to suit your purpose was.

the persons below really made the point when they wrote "It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand "

what you are proposing is unethical...

> It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?

In a similar sense that I'm not willing to pay more for "essential" food than for luxury food; or in the same sense that it seems unfair to have to pay for life-saving medical treatments.

It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand — the whole meaning of the word "inelastic" being that changing the price of it won't incentivize people to use any more/less of it.

Inelastic demand should, at the very least, be subsidized. This is why public healthcare exists; why food stamps exist; etc. But better yet, inelastic demand — because it is so predictable — should be optimized heavily for by suppliers (for power plants, this is "building out base-load capacity") such that economies of scale enable the supply for inelastic demand to be satisfied with lower cost than the supply for elastic demand.

The point is not to exploit inelastic demand, but to separate inelastic demand from elastic demand when there isn't enough supply to fit both needs.

With food, it's possible to manage supply through stockpiling. With electricity, storage is tricky, so when there's a change to supply, demand has to be changed to match. You can do that with blackouts or economics. Many large customers have contracts where they pay a lower rate in exchange for disconnecting their load when needed to reduce demand. Anything essential would be on another meter that has a higher rate.

Why is it a problem to apply the same principle to residential connections?

Of course, in my area, most of my utility outages are a result of interrupted lines and not supply issues, both essential and non-essential would be equally disrupted. And, it's not feasible to switch a significant number of residences to a two-meter system in any reasonable amount of time, so this is firmly in the thought expirement category.

> It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand

WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad..

"Charge more for essential services" just sounds terrible and you are correct, inelastic demand needs to be affordable, and subsidized if it is NOT affordable.

i dont understand how someone would advocate that "essential services has higher value to me and should cost more".

Essential services like heating my home does not have a higher value, it is an absolutely essential service to prevent death from cold temperatures..

This person should try living in -24C without heat and see if it changes their views.

If I lived in -24C, it would be extremely valuable for me to have heat.

As it is, I live in a climate that does dip below 0C from time to time, and having access to heat is important, so I have a backup generator for the house, and another for the well, because water is important too. When I use them, just the energy cost is much higher than utility power, so I don't use them when utility power is available. There's capital cost and operational costs to pay too. Many people who live around me don't have generators, so they have to hope outages won't be too long, or that they can make it to a warming center --- but outages are often coincident with locally heavy snowfall and our roads are always steep, so that makes it difficult to travel even short distances to get to warmth.

In my area, the issue isn't rolling blackouts, it's usually lines broken due to falling trees. Paying more for uninterupted utilities wouldn't fix that, but if it were rolling blackouts, I would certainly prefer to pay more for utility power for essential loads rather than paying more for local generation for essential loads.

Your furnace will either use very little electricity if it burns something else or it is exactly the kind of thing to shut off since your home can already buffer heat quite effectively. Allowing room temperature to drop by 1 or 2 degrees is preferable to blackouts.

Sounds like a good idea, but would, IMO, split less along the essential/non-essential line than along the richer-poorer line.

Richer people likely also would counter this with battery or diesel powered backup power (already happens a lot in countries that have irregular blackouts). If they use batteries, their power usage would even go up dues to losses in the charge/discharge cycle.

Just cap the electricity output and let consumers decide for themselves to what to turn on. Turning on too much will flip the breaker. They’ll figure it out for themselves.

Well, threaten them with blackouts if they dont cut enough usage.