Re:The Lowly Thermostat, Now Minter of Megawatts
by lutorm on Thursday May 22, 2014 @07:34PM
(#7787236)
The power generation market absolutely works like this. The problem is that the power consumption market does not. Since most customers only pay a fixed average price/kWh instead of a time of use tariff, so people have no incentive to conserve power since they're still paying the same price even though the spot price has gone up by an order of magnitude.
If the consumers paid the spot price and realized their air conditioner now cost something like $10/hr to run, I bet you demand would come down. The problem is that this would completely screw over those that can't adjust their demand in the process.
If you've hit 100% capacity there's nothing you can do except start blacking out neighborhoods. The solutions to date are to a)fire up "peaker" plants which are hellishly expensive to operate but keep the lights on or b)buy surplus power from other markets on the open market. And that price will not be the standard price.