When we bought our first house in 1982 in New Zealand we already had demand response in the form of "ripple" control over our hot water heater. This gave the power supplier direct control over our hot water heater thus giving them the ability to reduce demand during peak times. We never noticed it. We have now gone solar with a diverter for hot water heating but I'm sure "ripple" control is still out there. Oh yes, we got a reduced rate too because of this. Love your videos Rosie, best regards from New Zealand.
I remember ripple control in NZ! Our lights on dimmers would flicker ever-so-slightly when the ripples were coming through and then you'd hear the click on the receiver (in our hallway) turning on/off our hot water cylinder for those few peak hours. Usually off for three hours in the peak morning, and three hours in the peak evening and on/heating for the other 18 hours of the day. I thought it was unique to NZ but it seems many countries around the world use/used to use ripple control, and have since the 1940s
@@aidandillon9520As an audio engineer I hated ripple control. No matter how hard you tried to filter them out the tones would break through & impose themselves into recordings being made at the time. They were barely audible, but nonetheless they ruined the recording. Had to stop & start again.
@@donnamarie3617 in Canada and the US we call this load shedding. (sometimes redlining in the south) Most often it was a relay on the air conditioner but sometimes also the electric hot water heater. (electric hot water isn't common here) it was 15-30min maximum at a time for usually a maximum of 1-2 hours a day. The problem is that it would take the ac the rest of the day to catch back up since it only happened at the hottest of days. Initially they did give a rebate on electricity, but they cut it out, so everyone stopped signing up for it. For a while they diverted the rebates to "programmable" thermostats (scheduled tstats) which didn't work for load shedding. Now some tstats like nest and ecobee do Demand load shedding which is actually somewhat hard to opt out of. Again no rebate on electricity.
We recently shifted heating of our hot water from night to day, when our solar panels power our house. So we don't need to draw from the grid to heat our water. It's a simple change which is very effective.
Rosie, you have done it again, thank you. Knowledge is power, dispelling, legacy energy system media, advocating for renewables competitors, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
California has shown that simply messaging consumers that reduced consumption is needed for 2 hours. There was a huge response and people reduced the energy consumption was reduced with no capital cost .
Yes it's amazing how much impact something so simple can have! I still think that to take it much further it's going to have to be much simpler and provide value to the customers as well as the utility.
@@andrealeong8714it can but it's extremely expensive, there need to be many whole power stations that only run at peak times, perhaps 2 separate half-hours per day, but the power station still has to be staffed, lit, maintained & boiler pressure kept up for the whole day in case there's a random extra peak. In places where load shedding operates those peak-only power stations can be scrapped, bringing the price down enormously.
I'm old enough to remember the rolling blackouts triggered by Enron in order for them to sidestep consumer protection regulations and sell electricity to themselves at outrageous rates passed on to households. Hard to grasp that that was a quarter century ago. It still doesn't excuse the more recent profiteering by PSE&G while they've done precious little to update their grid to deal with the changing demands of a growing population.
@@andrealeong8714 It is no normal demand when you have to message your customers. We have it here in Germany too. It happens about one time a year, and not for the whole country, but southern regions. If you build the grid for the hour with the most demand, it will be much more expensive. So everyone can safe.
Its something we do here in the UK with Octopus energy, we get a cheaper duel tariff rate if we allow the flexible charging of our EV. When there is a surplus of power we can have free electricity to use and in the winter we are paid to reduce usage in saving sessions for grid flexibility and demand response.
So spot on! I also think demand response has much much more potential than most people realize, including a lot of actual experts. General lighting is not an issue, not now, people won't have to stumble in darkness to save electricity in periods if high demand, the idea that they would is plain stupid. A led light bulb typically draws a few watts, while things like clothes dryers, water heaters, and EV chargers typically draws kilowatts, and it is often not that critical when the energy for them is taken from the grid. There are led light bulbs on the market now that are ~15 times more efficient than old incandescent light bulbs, and 2-3 times more efficient than led light bulbs that was considered great just a few years ago, and are still common in stores. Personally, I pay much less for electricity now, here in Europe, since soon after the energy crisis started, than I have for many years before that. In small part by switching to flexible tariff, and manually avoiding using much power when the price is high that I don't have to use right then. But also by replacing inefficient equipment. That is, my total cost for electricity has decreased a lot, even when I include costs for connection, and sharp increase of energy tax on electricity. I do think most consumers will need automated systems for demand response, mostly systems that are automated for them, and those systems shouldn't cause any noticeable inconvenience, of any kind. I believe those systems needs not only to work well technically, but the user experience needs to be great in order for people to accept them fast.
Another outstanding video from the best engineering information and education channel on the web. Rosie is so very good. This is such an important key to a successful energy transition.
We're already seeing demand response mechanisms at play here in Sydney. AGL have a "peak energy rewards" program - essentially they provide advance notice asking customers to keep consumption below a specific value for a 1, 2 or 3 hour period. Hit that target and you get a $5 credit for a 1 hour event, or a $10 credit for a 2-3 hour event. No penalty for not hitting the target. Similar to your point about queuing up for cheap petrol, it's a mechanism that people can leverage if they want.
I had something similar with Origin, but the problem with it was that they would ask you to keep your usage a certain percentage lower than your average usage for that time window over the last (I think it was a month). But as we hit these targets it lowered our average usage and it became harder an harder to hit the targets they requested. it saved us a bit of money in the first 6 months but after that I stopped bothering to try and found a different plan after the 12month contract was up
This year BC Hydro started an optional time of day rate plan. Last month I earned $12 by shifing demand away from the evening and into the night. Not much, but I am happy to help reduce peak demand and reduce the need for new power generation projects. I set my EV to charge at night, set the heat pump to come on and heat the house before the rate goes up, and shift my use of hot water and appliances out of the 4-9pm highest cost time. Of course it helps that I am retired, and my solar generation means that for most of the year I draw no energy from the grid between 4pm and 6pm.
Thanks for the video Rosie! I have heard the "it will never work, the grid will melt when everybody will plug their EVs at the same time" argument and I find that fascinating that people don't think of their charger/electricity operator as smart enough to balance the load over time. I live in Sweden and I use Tibber as an electricity provider with a spot price tariff. Yes it was more expensive in 2022, but the range of prices within days was huge and Tibber, by default, makes the car charging as low cost as possible based on when you want the car to be ready, with which battery level, and the spot price. Now that the prices have come down it's still great value. I don't understand why it's not a thing everywhere...
I happen to live near a university that sports about 35 Nobel memorial prizes in economics, and they aren't touting market pricing for electricity yet. Look how far ahead of them you are!! And thanks especially for showing the steps needed to do it, do it right, and avoid pitfalls.
We've been generally happy load shifting with Amber Electric here in Australia for a few years now. Incredibly cheap for charging the EV on the weekend daytimes. We have timers on the heat pump HWS, dishwasher & washing machines. There have been a few nasty price spike surprises on cold winter nights, but mostly avoid that with a wood fire. We are soon to get a battery so that will make our lives a bit easier to manage with 5 minute dynamic pricing. Also won't need a fire once the house gets fully insulated during the reno, just the RCAC.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Are your timers just actual timers doing the same thing every day, or are they communicating with Amber's price forecasts and adjusting accordingly?
@@EngineeringwithRosie The (Reclaim Energy) HWS has an inbuilt timer, set for around 10am, but is Wi-Fi and ready for future grid signals. The other appliances are manual which we also set for between 10 & 2pm The battery will be automated with Amber's 'Smart Shift.
The main (but far from only) issue with Amber is exporting excess rooftop solar at a cost of several cents per kilowatt hour. As we can’t help having excess solar this boosted our electricity bills considerably. Their only ‘solution’ was to block the export of excess solar though in our case we had the wrong inverter to do this but this is what they are doing routinely for people with compatible inverters. So actually shutting off excess solar from reaching the grid seems like a total waste especially when solar was only supplying 50-60% of overall energy usage. Also they would just take energy from our battery in the evening if there was a modest price spike so our battery would be depleted and later there was sometimes a higher spike but our battery was then low and then we had to buy energy on evenings when we would have been self sufficient. And they of course make an additional monthly charge for this service. We quit because our energy bills had never been so high and we found it stressful not being in control. I wont be participating in the future.
Many moons ago homes in the UK were fitted with a "white meter" that only supplied electrical energy during a specified time period overnight. Consumers like myself installed simple timers to run immersion heaters, washing machines etc during those hours. This led to reduced bills and something for the nuclear power stations to do overnight. It was simple but effective. Just time shifting your loads.😊
Here in Quebec Canada , we have a demand response program that is slowly being adopted . I had several intelligent thermostats installed through an incentivized program last fall. The system allows to opt in at two levels or opt out at each event. Opting in pays $ per event. The incentive paid for 95 % of the equipment and installation in one winter .
You need solar generated behind the meter for that to work. This means “rooftop solar above the carpark”. Without a direct connection between the solar panel and the car it’s a waste of time and the owner of the carpark is better off using the power for fixed tenancies like the local gym or supermarket. If I could pay $22 a day for parking but in the process also get 10-20 kWh of electricity in to my car without having to move it I would be strongly incentivised to a) buy an EV and drive it to work b) park it all day in the charging bay c) not charge at home at night. So far nobody had bothered to roll out both solar panels and unmetered all day car charging in a car park
@@theairstig9164 Simons Londonderry in Edmonton has that. Only 1 L3 and 2 L2 chargers. To get the umetered rate you need a Simons loyalty card tied to your Flo account.
I’ll be making use of demand response tomorrow. My supplier just emailed me to say at 1pm, all you can eat electricity. I was going to pasteurise my water tonight so I’ve moved the timer instead. I’ll make sure I do the same with the washing machine and dishwasher; use them tomorrow afternoon instead of overnight. We were planning on making a soup or stew tomorrow so that’ll get prepared early. If I’ve space in the car I’ll even grab a few free miles too.
But for the vast majority of families with both parents working and the kids at school they are not home to use the cheaper electricity and if you want to trust turning machines on when you are not there then you are asking for trouble. Two relatives of mine incurred significant damage to their homes when operating a washing machine and a dishwasher when they were at work and they malfunctioned. Presumably if this same family had a BEV it would not be at home during the day either. I can see the benefit of altering your hot water heater but if you have one operating a Hydronic heating system then that would be of little use. Electricity is a utility service and is meant to fit a pattern that the majority of consumers use due to factors they cannot change. Consumers should not have to plan their lives around when generators can and can't make electricity. Electricity wholesalers see the demand based consumption model as a win for them increasing earnings as they will slug the poor people who cannot change their peak usage pattern with increased tariffs vis smart meters as they know the majority of working families cannot change their pattern.
@@frasercrone3838 most of the free energy sessions I’ve had lately have been at the weekend. When my wife and I are not at work and my son isn’t at school. For the ones in the middle of the weekday, I’ve had advance notice the day before so I’ve been able to schedule home battery charging, water tank and laundry to run. I’ve no issue having things run, I have good quality appliances regularly checked for issues. I call bull on the “significant damage” by not only the dishwasher but the washer too.
Thanks Rosie great video! Flexible demand and time of use tariffs are a great incentive for people to become more involved in energy! There is one aspect to this, which will be hardest to achieve, because it is a cultural change. Most of us have been trained to switch off things when we are not around to use them. But for cooling and heating we will need to do precisely that: cooling the house during the day to be able to switch off the airco in the early evening or in colder climates heat the house maybe even more, to be able to not need it in the peak times. - One thing I also noticed: the latest generation of household appliances (using heatpumps) are so energy efficient now that shifting their load does only remove tiny spikes in my demand. I still try to run them when producing my own electricity, or electricity is cheap though. Such is the power of gamification!😅
Demand response has operated in the U.K. for years, but has only been rolled out to consumers in the last couple of years. Previously turn down was only communicated to heavy industrial electricity users . Over the last couple of years it has been run by the company that supplies electricity to your home, ( provided you have a smart meter). Reports have shown it has been reasonably effective, but as alluded to in the video a bit clunky, usually you being advised the day before by text or email that if you reduce your electricity consumption for an hour then you get a small credit to your bill. The peak demand for electricity in the U.K. is usually between 4pm to 7pm in the winter. A big step forward for those with an EV ( like me) is when vehicle to grid is rolled out. I would be happy to supply electricity to the grid at peak times for a credit, I already charge my EVs when my tariff is cheap overnight.
Rosie, the thing that is missing from a demand response system in Australia is trust. Many have experienced gouging by our electricity suppliers/distributors. Those of us burnt by this behaviour are not likely to be open to a demand response scheme.
I'm with Octopus in the UK. My tariff is cheaper at night for car charging. It's also just about worth washing clothes at night on the cheaper power but it's a bit of a faff. My arrangement involves very little sophistication. They have a more automated system available, but I haven't got myself set up for it yet. I think I have a very restricted choice of cooperating car chargers for the automated hookup (via IOT?). There's at least one other electricity supplier operating similar demand management options. I'm amazed that New Mexico still has a completely dumb system.
Rosie, did you make this video in response to what happened in the UK a "few" days ago? It was due to a failure in the Norwegian interconnect cable to work properly. Electrical suppliers instead used people's power walls and EVs to balance the UK grid (which they paid the people providers a lot of money £0.50p credit was talked about). Or was this a happy coincidence seeing you planned and made this video weeks ago!
@@cheesyptpno, the taxpayers didn't feature in it. The UK grid and suppliers are private, shareholder owned companies. An instance of where privatisation actually provided a benefit....😮
In Ontario, Canada, time of use pricing is very fixed and doesn't make a lot of sense. Shifting major loads until after 11pm isn't very easy for most people. With the exception of ev charging it doesn't help much.
A lot of the time of use tariffs here are similar, bizarrely unrelated to the pricing in the wholesale market. But we also have some good small companies who get it.
@@EngineeringwithRosieI think the DNSPs in Australia are really trying to balance cost reflective pricing with simplicity for consumers. That’s why in Victoria, most DNSPs are moving to peak periods of 4pm to 9pm so that it reflects when demand is highest, but also creates certainty for residential customers as to when to shift their usage using timers. Not everyone wants to be fully exposed to electricity markets and the more complicated you make electricity pricing, the less compliance you will get since consumers will give up trying to change their behaviour.
@@chickennoodle6620 obviously I can't speak for the Australian market but with us it's so oversimplied with only 3 options everyone has given up. You can be on flate rate, regular time of use which the times don't make it easy for any meaningful load shifting, and a special EV TOS which has very low nighttime prices but gouging peak pricing.
@@SuperS05 Interesting. Here in Victoria, there is flat, TOU plans where you can have peak (4pm-9pm) and off-peak (all other times) periods, or as you described, TOU plans that allow you to use electricity for free/ at low tariff for a few hours in the middle of the day or over night to charge an EV. The two period TOU does work out cheaper if you are able to run your electricity loads during the day (when there is solar) or at night, and don't use much in the evening, but it's heavily dependent on if someone will be at home or can set timers to run the appliances during the day. If people are out from 9-5 and you can't schedule appliances, TOU will end up more expensive. My concern with making it more dynamic (apart from messaging people to reduce load during peak periods, or paying them credit to do so), is whether people will actually check current pricing of electricity to make their decisions? A simpler tariff scheme that approximates when there is greater demand for electricity is simpler to make decisions around.
Hi Rosie, you just nailed it! These are all the reasons why I decided to build Powerlake. It's all about helping people to pay less for energy with a decentralised and market-driven approach to flexible demand. The key is to improve our "Energy Profiles" to match production more closely, and more broadly too than the simple "export minimisation" goal that many solar owners employ. The majority of hot water systems, pool pumps & EV chargers in Australia can use this market-based technology with ZERO impact on day-to-day life. Importantly it means that not everyone needs solar and a battery. I would love to hear your thoughts if you're looking for solutions in the space!
@@alanhat5252 Yeah sorry about that, I'm developing from the core service out, so RUclips videos will be one of the last major things I create. The website itself only just started looking half decent after a few years of developing the service. Vids are definitely high up on the to-do now.
@@swademcYTsounds great. I already have a Combined Energy home energy management system built on top of a Solarhart electric hot water heater. It's fantastic and has saved us lots of $$ already. Best of all Combined Energy are based in Hobart where I live!
An important point: You don't have to shut down your light or computer to safe the grid. These ones are consuming so little, it doesn't matter. Living comfort is dropping too much by changing habits without making a big difference. But turning your air conditioning unit off for 2 hours or putting your water heater on on different hours will help. Here some examples in consumption, to see the difference: 10 Watt: LED light for one room 100 Watt: Office PC with 2 monitors 1000 Watt: air conditioning for one room, heat pump tumble dryer 2000 Watt: Each large cooking field on your stove, the oven, the water kettle, washing machine, dishwasher, classic tumble dryer ... 5000 Watt: Central electric water heating 10.000 Watt: EV charging, central air conditioning, sauna...
Excellent video. My one addition is in areas that have a lot of solar generation, you want to figure out where the cars are parked during solar hours, and install chargers there.
Who pays for the installation and how do they make their money back? That seems to be the question nobody has an answer to. Unless of course it’s “the end user and you’re going broke because the end user has cheaper options” which would explain why nobody has done it yet
@@theairstig9164 Gas isn't free. Electricity doesn't need to be either. It needs to be readily available. There are a lot of people who don't own their own home. They need a convenient place to charge. If somebody drives to work, and work during the day, then a charger at work is the way to go.
The reverse of this is encouraging use of energy during off-peak periods, and giving extra incentives when it's especially windy off-peak. Octopus in the UK is really innovative in this area. I have an EV which I plug in and octopus controls my charger. I tell them how much I want added and by when, and they decide how to achieve that. I can override it if necessary. I charge my household battery off-peak and haven't paid peak rates for electricity since I signed up for my EV tariff. Each country will have different requirements based on climate. Oz, and the southern US has heavy daytime load for Aircon in summer. The UK is the opposite, mostly heavy use in winter for heating and clothes drying.
Dynamic pricing has been great for me. I'm on the Octopus Tracker tariff in the UK (prices change daily), it has been consistently cheaper than even the Government price controls. But it's great for both electricity and gas pricing. It can be a little bit worrying about potential spikes in wholesale prices, but that's where economic substitution plays an important role, currently gas is 5p per kWh, which is really quite good. But if it goes over 7p per kWh I can always start heating the house with coal instead on the multi-fuel stove. It would be more reassuring if I also had a substitution option for electricity as well, perhaps I should look into the capital and running costs of a diesel generator.
@@anotherelvis The Octopus Tracker caps out at 100p per kWh, which is a lot (I could spend up to £100 per day with high winter usage if it went up to that price). It would be better to have a system like you say where you can set it to simply turn off when it goes over your desired limit, but there's nothing I know of that would do that. But you still want some kind of substitution (coal, diesel, solar, wind etc.) or you'll essentially be without energy during periods of extremely high prices.
@@rugbygirlsdadg No, I had Octopus also quote for a solar and battery system and it came in at £8,100 for a 3.5kw system with a 4.16kw battery . I would also have to get a heat pump which average installation in the UK is £12k. (also heat pumps are a terribly expensive way to heat your home). So if I instead take the £20k and put it in a savings account I will have over £1k per year in interest. This is just shy of what I use each year to buy all the gas, electricity and coal I need.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a great idea. One issue, though, that needs to be considered is consumer setpoints lining up. Picture if everyone set there evs to charge when rates drop below 11c/kwhr, as soon as the utility dropped below that, demand would surge within seconds, and then when the utility went back above that limit to stop the surge demand would disappear. That could create a cycle capable of bringing down the grid. I would suggest that the solution would be to require consumer devices to add a random value, on the order of hundredths of a penny to their setpoint. So if I set my ev to charge at 11c/kwhr, internally, the car generates a random value, let's say +$.0012, and adds that in to use as the true setpoint 11.12 c/kwhr. That would effectively smooth out the demand around the whole number prices for the utility.
With the price of power on the spot market dropping to near zero during periods of peak renewable production in some regions like California, it now makes sense to store energy as heat at the household level. So for example, you could have the utility heat your hot water to 200°F while power is free thanks to the over abundance of solar energy, then cut the heat entirely in the evening as costs on the grid spike. Hot water heater tanks can maintain that high temperature for hours, and a mixer valve can ensure scalding water never exits the hot water heater by mixing it with cold water as it comes out, to your predefined preferred temperature. Likewise, during the summer while power is free mid-day, the utility can drop your air conditioning thermostat to your preferred minimum indoor temperature - say, 66°F - and then kill the compressor during the evening while demand spikes and supplies sag. Your compressor would remain off until your home hit some predefined maximum temperature, say 80°. Even in hot weather, a well-insulated home chilled to 66° can stay under 80° for many hours without needing to run a power-hungry compressor. I suspect in any location where homes are routinely air-conditioned, much of the excess, free power being generated midday can be stored as heat (or cold) in homes and businesses essentially for free, using existing hot water tanks and air conditioning systems, with the only requirement being the addition of smart, grid-aware thermostats.
@@aliendroneservices6621 My jurisdiction (Alberta) actually did that! (For a period of 6 month in order to bring in onerous new regulations.) It made "energy" investors nervous, even if they were planning of developing more traditional fossil fuel plants. I have it in my head that the reason was to prop up the price of Natural Gas: making electricity more expensive.
A comprehensive solution requires devices to communicate in real time with relevant sources including grid, local PV output, battery status etc and use this intelligently to adjust load accordingly, and I suggest to use an interface that can be tweaked locally. One example is having deep freezer that "super cools" when power is cheap/free and provide only minimal cooling necessary when power is more expensive. Hot water systems are obviously similar. Other equipment may require something different again, the key point here is the protocols and the communication channels. Even with a solar battery, other devices such as HWS and deep freezers can supplement energy storage. Hot tubs are another good example.
I think this is the biggest technical challenge to be solved -- find a standardised way to control appliances and create easily used energy management systems for households. Currently you have to be an energy nerd to integrate all those components, but when it finally works, it's great.
Oversized appliances are a solution. I'm sure the appliance manufacturers in Europe are hoping for something like that. Larger water heating tanks for example would work as a thermal battery.
Hi. Thanks, I appreciate all your good work in this space. In Western Australia I am currently paying $A 0.08/kw h for power between 9:00 and 15:00 each day. This variable price is available to anyone for the cost of having a smart meter installed, and the supplier is happily absorbing the costs and benefits of the remaining variabilities. Our car charger is set to only deliver power during that time, and we are able to do all of our charging at that price without a lot of thinking or risk. This setup doesn't involve any special connectivity or external control. Clearly a some further improvement could be made with a thoroughly smart system, but I think this improvement should be compared with what is possible more simply now. I understand that WA is more than usually blessed with solar power, but in any case I think that simpler systems to manage demand should be considered.
I am also in Perth. Two suggestions. I start charging my ev from my home battery at 3am. It uses the left over sunshine from the previous day, empties the home battery to make better use of the battery during the day, and has the car charging whilst I am asleep! By about 7am the sun takes over the car charging. Second we need to encourage TransPerth to put three pin outlets at all the carparks at the train stations. If cars sop up the excess energy between 10am and 3pm, they won't put demand up so high in the evening.
Grid planners know that demand response is our future and utilities need to offer rate plans that reward customer behavior. Smart meters with clever phone apps that give consumers control of HVAC, water heaters, EV's, etc could automate this to make it easy to save money.
Mind you, this would require basically scrapping most of your home appliances for remote controllable ones. As much as I would like to have it, the only thing I have timing control of right now is the dryer and washing mashine, which have internal timers (no remote capability) - the rest can't do, simple remote switches won't do the job. This will take somemtime to change.
@@wernerviehhauser94 Well, you could put the incentives in place and then encourage people to switch as their old appliances break down/ need to be replaced.
@@chickennoodle6620 ONCE my stuff breaks, I will get remote controllable ones. But basically all of it is over 15 years old and I still get new spare parts for cheap (just ordered new dampeners for the washing mashine for less than 20 bucks, and a lot of spares can be 3D printed) and they are usually installed quickly - so I do still ask myself if it is really that beneficial to replace the device, weighing the prospect of energy savings against cost and energy requirements of a new one....
A large part of the morning peak demand is industrial cooling and heating systems, turned on prior to people arriving at work (shopping centers, commercial building, teaching institutions, business etc). All of these are set to fixed start times, controlled by automatic timers. Many of these will be set to start on the hour or half hour, leading to sudden peak usage. A well-developed algorithm could be developed which would give preset starting times, derived from location on the grid, cooling requirement, maximum starting load etc, resulting in a much more efficient delivery of power.
Thanks for emphasising this, Rosie. People should be looking to get devices that are smart and which can be automated and communicate with demand response services. Octopus Energy in the UK can already control some compatible batteries, cars and EVSEs.
I agree wholeheartedly, but would like to propose some nuances: 1) (indeed) a guaranteed maximum pricetag cap - this could be "a-la-carte" choosable by the customer, as a trade-off for a discount on the average pricetag. Something like "5x the mean" seems reasonable, to avoid Texan debacles. 2) A guaranteed upper limit for the four cheapest hours during any contiguous period of 24 hours; this may be seasonally variable, with a reasonable, pre-agreed fluctuation. 3) The facility to reabsorb your self-generated (e.g. home-solar) energy into your own sink (e.g. E.V.) for a reasonable transport-surcharge, say 10% of the instantaneous purchase-price, at least within "driving distance" of your generators. These would not de-incentivize sellers, and would strongly motivate buyers (users and generators); they are not technologically challenging to implement (and are far preferable to having to increase production by twenty-something percent).. Home-heating and EVs (I expect) would be able to contribute most, benefitting sources as well as sinks.
Hi Rosie. Would having A/C shutdown for 10 seconds every minute during peak demand be a good way of reducing demand. After all each unit would be using 16% less power, without having a huge impact on household cooling.
We'll implement that in the upcoming year. The devices required (smart meter, home energy management system) is already there. Only the dynamic electricity tariff is still missing but from 2025 on, every electricity vendor in has to offer a dynamic tariff in Germany. Needless to say that the price has to be somehow forwarded to the HEMS for it to take advantage of the fluctuations.
In the UK "Economy 7" was introduced in October 1978, it offered 7 hours at 20% reduced price overnight & slightly more expensive during the day but it depended on a clock inside the meter which was tied to the 50Hz supply so had to be reset at the quarter-year meter reading and after every power cut by an official meter reader. The tariff is still available but with a more reliable clock. The Wikipedia page lists several alternatives. The UK also has pumped-storage hydro to compensate the nuclear not varying output. (Electricity is a by-product of the manufacture of weapons-grade fissile materials in the reactor core, the cores are shut down at intervals to harvest the material, I believe on a 3-month cycle, so they're not designed for the second-by-second control required to match demand & cannot achieve it now that the demand for fissile materials is reduced).
Not sure if you’ve heard Rosie but apparently some electricity networks in Australia (eg NSW’s Ausgrid) and retailers (eg Shell, Iberdrola) are getting rid of shoulder tariffs or charging them same rates as peak when they used to be between peak and off-peak. This really takes out the incentive to use more power during the middle of the day which was usually shoulder tariff during the week. It does however incentivise installing solar PV with battery energy storage.
Yeah, much better to use gas peakers than backup generators. It was a very bad example. We shouldn't rely on a hospital reducing its demand either as that would be $10 billion of capital going idle plus $1mill per hour in wages not being used effectively.
I think we will find many capital expensive applications the costs are too great for them to reduce their demand on a dime. Eg $100billion data centre reducing its demand by 20% has a cost of $10 mill per day in lost revenue.
Excellent video, Rossie. The other extreme is coming. Customers with rooftop PV and OVERSIZED battery in their V2G EVs not wanting any grid electricity. The $TRILLIONS Australian national electrical grid needs $100sBILLIONS from millions and millions and millions of customers. Dead CASH FLOW is an extremely dangerous economic future for the Australian national electrical grid. I bet that the grid will want customers to remain connected and oversize their rooftop to be the suppliers of dirt cheap electricity. The grid will use the existing grid to supply the new demand from heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels. The logic is overwhelming. The grid will be repurposed. The grid is too valuable and fragile and will be protected and maintained. New CASH FLOW is the key.
Oh for the days before our grid was privatised, when the power suppliers just worked for the public good and no complicated market operation was necessary. Renewables subsidies could have gone to central, public solar and wind farms, benefitting all Australians, not excluding renters and apartment dwellers. Just big energy farms would have economies of scale to buy and maintain the equipment, providing way bigger bang for our subsidy-buck than rooftop solar. A government monopoly could offer such Demand Response options but there would be no $9000/MWh wholesale prices to begin with.
What I see as being a viable method to achieve frictionless central demand response is to take the inverters that are already used to produce renewable AC, and use them to encode some simple data into the alternating sine wave. Something simple and standardized that device and appliance manufacturers can easily build decode, that just relays price signals, that way the device, say a fan, can switch to low mode at high prices and high mode at low prices. If we rely on people choosing to turn things off or switch to a low power setting, that'll never work. But allow for universal price signal reading in real time, and products will start being sold that can do that work automatically
Here on the west coast of Florida, Duke Energy uses what I believe is called a load shedding device that is connected to the HVAC unit and Duke has control of the that system. They give the household a small discount for the installation and control of the unit. The down side of this device with Duke in control is that the daily summer temperature are in the mid to upper 90 degrees (F). At times it can get a little uncomfortable for short periods of time. Not a big fan of this plan, but eventually it will become mandatory along with net-metering (ToD), which will force me to write a program to switch the HVAC from Duke to Solar and back again when Duke activates/deactivates the unit. I will not have enough solar/battery to run the HVAC all day. If I go with this programming it will help the grid even more than the device.
In Phoenix , Arizona it get hotter than hell here. To balance the load, we allow the power company to turn our AC up a few degrees during high demand periods.
I've been alluding to the importance of this topic, since I've subscribed to this channel. Since nobody covers a topic is thoroughly as you do. So this post was sorely needed. But I would have liked to hear a little bit about TOU time of use tariff pricing which is related to the subject matter (Maybe in a future post you could touch on it?)
In Ontario, Canada, while load shedding is opt in, it is marketed as green incentives so most people don't understand it. Once setup it isn't easy to override and in some cases against the contract.
I think it will require a big wakeup to the utilities that they are not going to get full control over this, nor get the full value from it. They're going to have to learn how to share with their customers if they want to reach the full possibility of demand response!
@@EngineeringwithRosie unfortunately the utility is public run even though they pretend to be neutral, there's clearly a lot of politics at play. We don't really have any small good providers here. Mostly just scams.
Must admit when we were approached about installing a smart meter and using an on demand plan it seemed more like a penalty system rather than a benefit system as I found I could not really change my usage. Basically only the washing machine could be changed to low tariff, cooking, no, fridge no, hot water no, lighting no, air conditioning no. In addition the on demand was totally rigged I.e. the peak instantaneous usage was then applied as if that usage was for the whole hour, unbelievable!
@@drigans2065Wind and solar are pure baseload fuels. They cannot load-follow, and they cannot respond to peak demand. Any storage is used to fill in their holes.
@@drigans2065 How you imagine "renewables" respond on demand if they depend on weather and time of the day? Nuclear power stations can easily follow load. France is doing exactly that - they decrease power of nuclear fleet to make place for intermittent power sources, thus making their capacity factor much lower for nuclear stations than it could be.
@@valdisvi The way France's nuclear power follows demand is that when ever they have too much power, they sell it to other countries, the UK often buys it at negative price! Regularly changing the power output of a nuclear plant is not a good idea. Wind turbines can very easily be shut down when not needed.
ls it just me that sees an enormous opportunity for home/business owners to reduce their energy costs overall ? Just as people did when they invested in home solar years ago. An upfront investment resulted in years and years of very cheap electricity recouping the outlay quickly. Now with home batteries and V2G evs , surely there is money to be made ? According to Saul Griffith , home and transport energy costs are a major part of the household budget. Seems like a no brainer to me and the national grid benefits as well. More efficient households and a more efficient grid means cheaper energy overall . Cheaper energy overall means that all of society benefits. A classic win win.
If we add three pin outlets at train station car parks, we could sop up excess solar power in the day time and reduce demand when people get home in the evening. Call it "Plug and Pray" and don't guarantee electricity will be provided. If you get five hours of granny charging it is a bonus, if you don't nothing lost.
Seems that in many dwellings turning off the heat/ac and having your battery power the grid should be no problem depending on duration and compensation!
Here in Meadow Springs 6210 the government has a trial of a community battery bank. Apart from storing electricity, and buffering demand, it could also manage connected smart meters. On a smaller scale, governments could install smaller scale batteries in select peoples' homes to aid a group of nearby premises, even if the actual residence has no solar panels. The reward would be cheaper power for the residents. I would select homes of rentals, primarily those people receiving social security benefits and the like.
In several places people are getting just a battery & bi-directional meter & saving huge amounts of money, sometimes this upload of power is done on a timer & sometimes it's triggered by the grid.
Self-demand management needs to be packaged up into easy to install & configure systems for the average householder. I’ve done it with the Shelly range of Smart Home products linked by Home Assistant. (pool pump, washing machine, dryer & water heater are turned on/paused depending on own solar output, forecast weather & TOU power costs). Works fantastically at reducing my grid demand at peak times. However, physically integrating the Shelly modules into the appliances & linking to action commands in HA would be well beyond all but technonerds. These types of Smart Home modules need to be incorporated into all high wattage appliances being sold to provide sufficient demand response capability in the future. If included during manufacture, would probably only be $5 extra.
I foresee a future where superfluous energy is stored in homes and used in factories, etc. More efficient/cheaper solar and cheaper/safer batteries will come to market in the next ten years. We do need to move towards super efficient heat exchangers and far superior insulation though. Proof of concept is already here, now we simply need to improve the technologies and reduced the cost.
In my childhood I lived in Soviet Union where we "built communism" and demand was regulated. It ended up with everybody getting nothing (everything was so called "deficit") and with collapse of entire Soviet Union. Relying on intermittent and diluted power sources to build "Net Zero" strongly reminds me Soviet Union, therefore I worry that it will end similarly - nobody will get needed energy and whole system will collapse.
What about investing in large flywheel energy storage devices for storage so you have energy available in high peak times. You avoid the predatory private sector pricing that way.
Some demand response is a really good idea eg heating your water, or cooling your house in summer during the day especially if you have solar. But With lots of battery we can match demand and supply so simply. Thete are reports in china of batterries for vehicles costing $50Kwh. At this price batterries are the long tetm solution to matching supply to demand when using renewables
"People expect the lights to turn on when they flip the switch" Of course they do, but that's an extreme example. That's an immediate need, yet so low power it doesn't really matter. There are many loads where people absolutely won't care or even notice. So long as they're comfortable, only the most paranoid people will care when their heating/cooling runs. Same with an EV, all good so long as it has enough charge when they need it. I personally wouldn't care most of the time when the washer or dryer runs, so long as the spin cycle doesn't start when I'm asleep. I suppose it boils down to whether you directly interact with the load, or whether it's set and forget and all you care about is that it's done by some deadline.
Dynamic pricing that gives you the day ahead auction prices is a big step in the right direction. But it also creates this growing problem that a lot of people will switch on power consumers right at the turn of the hour, which creates a huge spike, which is a big redispatch event that costs a lot of money. Same with the case where a big chunk of the current load drops off at the turn of the hour and suddenly you need to get rid of a lot of excess energy quickly.
Would need real time electricity pricing. With price groups. By changing the prices per group in real time it should prevent the kind of issues you mention. For example instead of prices dropping for everyone at the same time it's done gradually at different rates for different groups. A self learning algorithm would definitely be able to handle that. Besides batteries can handle any major load changes. Apparently in the UK recently there was a problem with a power interconnect. A large drop in available power occurred but was rapidly corrected with battery systems.
As the world moves to 100% solar, wind and hydro + battery storage, demand response will be MUCH easier as we won't need giant power plants burning stuff, 24/7, even when that power can't be used. ALL fossil fuel power plants are built to deliver ~25% wasted energy, which is insane!
You don't have to get cold by turning off the heating. I use a Homely smart thermostat on my heat pump, and it over heats the house just before an expensive time, then switches off at peak time, so still off at peak, but you are not sacrificing being warm.
@@EngineeringwithRosieapparently Pylontech rackmount (blade) batteries integrate very nicely with home automation giving you enormous scope for matching supply/demand with your lifestyle (& the charts are very pretty 😊). You'll have to decide whether that beats your new wheeled battery.
You may have seen that Octopus have just launched 'Mercury' where they're inviting smart tech makers to collaborate with developing common API standards for heating & energy systems.
If electric cars take off, (have one but I am starting to wonder), we have to have demand response, as the grid will not be able to take the higher peak load. It is all ready starting. My son has got a deal where he gets free electricity in the middle of the day when solar is at it's peak. Guess when he is heating his hot water ( a heat pump with enough smarts to set the time of heating), washing, dish washing, heating (remember those heaters that stored heat at off peak times, he brought one), cooling, charging is Tesla wall. Free electricity, heating the concrete slab once again is an option.
This further erodes the grid as an equitable public utility and creates a two-class system of power consumers: those who own their own homes and have complete control over how much electricity they generate, consume, and export, and those who are almost entirely at the mercy of consuming electricity at whatever rate they are charged.
No that's actually not true at all! The standard for rooftop solar where households with solar get paid to export no matter the need for that power, that has the effect you describe. But demand response means that everyone on the grid gets the benefit of avoiding grid upgrades to deal with increasing peak power requirements. I do agree that access to the network will need to be priced fairly, i.e. it shouldn't be a volumetric charge because then that would do what you say and mean that people with panels and batteries pay barely anything to be connected, which wouldn't be fair.
The more people that engage with this then the less that electricity will cost since it'll save us building a **** tonne of batteries and burning a **** tonne of fuel.
My concern with "virtual power plants" is that every proposal I have seen is proprietary, and unlikely to interoperate well as a result. The Canadian electrical code was recently changed: such that a service upgrade is no longer needed for installing Level 2 EV charging: so long as a whole house monitoring system, called an Electric Vehicle Energy Management System (EVEMS), is installed. However smart water heaters often come with competing system managed by the manufacturer. I can see a case where the utility operator requests that that water heater company shed load: only for the load shed to be undermined by the EVEMS deciding it is safe to start charging again, since the water heater dropped off. I would prefer to manage my loads through Home Assistant: but I am not sure that can be made "fail safe" enough to qualify as an EVEMS. I suppose having the charger default to a low power state in the absence of a heartbeat signal from Home Assistant may be enough.
I love the subjects that you cover. Thanks for giving us more information to help us think. One suggestion; I am from the U.S. and to me you have an accent. If you could, slightly, slow down your speaking, it would allow better comprehension of the info you are sharing. Just I.M.O.
I hope you could give a compare and contrast post in the future between centralized and decentralized demand response models?Since decentralized/Blockchain database models also have some downsides. Such as greater energy requirements. I get it decentralization seems more democratic and utopian, but the devils in the details. So what seems to be obvious on face value isn't always the case.
Keep wondering with Oz having so few residences whether privatisation in th ee1990's was worth it. If the SEC for Victoria would continued then they could control and expand most sensibly.
2:50 It's *_"Mountain"_* singular: "RMI, formerly known as the Rocky *_Mountain_* Institute, is a think tank in the United States co-founded by Amory Lovins..." (Wikipedia)
Destabilizing the grid and making electricity more expensive is extremely counterproductive. None of this “energy transition” talk makes much sense when the end result is nothing more than inferior service, increased costs, decreased convenience and safety, all so big pots of money can be moved from the consumer to the provider (where the only real benefits are realized).
@superspeeder, you can’t reasonably argue for convenient or safety when the thing we are trying to prevent through this effort, a global climate meltdown, is the biggest safety, security and societal risk humanity has ever faced besides nuclear armed conflict. Austria’s in a relatively good spot when it comes to renewables and grid stability. Count your blessings! I’m jealous.
@@alanhat5252 Centralized hubs of batteries would have a smaller cost of service and installation, but we need a way to ensure that we can trust them. So for many customers I agree the local storage is the best solution.
Interesting Rosie you are into market-based mechanisms. The NEM structure isn't optimal to handle demand response, as FCAS is a market unavailable to consumers, even in aggregate. In this new world, we should all play a role in FCAS, implying radical reform to NEM or reintroduction of direct government controls such as in Vic.
I didn't talk to Octopus for this video (I have spoken to people from the company before) and I didn't get paid by them. I just looked for examples of companies that made it through the crises I mentioned in the video and chose Octopus because they were involved in both Texas and UK, so made a simpler way to tell the story than having a different company for each event.
This video included an advert for Ecoflow, not Octopus. Octopus was just an interesting example of reasonable competence when the rest of the Texas grid operators were failing wildly.
Nordpool already tries to do it. Once an hour by price. But now they consider 15 minute cycles. I don't think it works well because.. well, prices are set a day ahead.
Weather (and other) forecasts are quite accurate a day ahead. So you can actually do some of this manually by just seeing that the price will drop. You might do a lot of things involving heating water at that time.
A different perspective to save life on the Earth. The electricity supply is important infrastructure and security in any country, and should not be left to the private market which is shark soup and sometimes called the Thatcher model 2. What every country needs is a unified State supply of the most environmentally friendly supply mechanisms on the ground, in the water, in the air and solar radiation. The profit grab syndrome of the privateers, or rather the pirateers is so last century, as are fossil fuels, and if push comes to a shove nuclear power. The latter two are a danger to the health of life on the living planet, which is now on life support. Let's not allow minor tech for incremental efficiency gains in monetary profit and savings get in the way of saving planetary life. Is there any other life form on the planet other than humans that screws its fellows for a cent a kilowatt hour? It's about time the thatcher - reagan duo and cronyism were thrown in the dustbin of history. I realise this is not quite on the topic of 'demand response', but everything we do cannot be geared to the monetary profit of corporations and their owners. People need a change of perspective and attitude in everything, if we are to reasonably survive the next several decades. Privateering corporate politics doesn't care about anything much other than short term profits.
Current variations on Neoliberalism seem to involve a _lot_ of backhanders to politicians which may make it difficult to get rid of, in the UK the only party offering something different is the Green Party & the popular Press has taken on the mission of disparaging them so they won't get elected into Government any time soon 😢
You use lighting as an illustration for demand. It would instead be relevant to talk of high consumption devices as the primary target. As mentioned, these include air condition, heating and EVs. These tend to be more modern and easier to control intelligently (in particular EVs). You should mention the vast base of older, non-smart controlable, appliances (washing machines, dryers, dish washers) - none of which has any level of smart control. SO, the whole new control sceme requires appropriate controls built into devices (as seen in heat pumps and EVs). These will allow intelligent apps to control the devices - perhaps primitive timing, perhaps intelligent load balancing.
Here in Canada we have a complete nutjob in the environmental minister's chair. Next year please come to Canada and do some outreach and education in Ottawa.
What did the honourable Steven Guilbeault do to you? Edit: Most recent thing he did was announce new regulations two weeks ago that include: - A right to a healthy environment - Restrictions of chemical testing on vertebrates - Category regulation of "forever chemicals" (announcement did not go into detail but mentioned non-stick cookware, second speaker, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, mentioned polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)). - Investigation of a few dozen "chemicals of concern" from a health and safety point of view, including flame retardants.
E/R. You're forgetting the current and in-situ examples of Kalgoorlie in 2023 and Broken Hill right now in 2024 ? ? It's great looking at 'demand response' as a mechanism in the tool kit for our future energy transition, except this has no "Emergency Response" effects ! ! V.
Thank goodness you’re talking about this. It’s super important.
Yes! So important. I'll be talking about it a lot more now I've got my own home energy makeover project 🏠🚗☀️
When we bought our first house in 1982 in New Zealand we already had demand response in the form of "ripple" control over our hot water heater. This gave the power supplier direct control over our hot water heater thus giving them the ability to reduce demand during peak times. We never noticed it. We have now gone solar with a diverter for hot water heating but I'm sure "ripple" control is still out there. Oh yes, we got a reduced rate too because of this. Love your videos Rosie, best regards from New Zealand.
I remember ripple control in NZ! Our lights on dimmers would flicker ever-so-slightly when the ripples were coming through and then you'd hear the click on the receiver (in our hallway) turning on/off our hot water cylinder for those few peak hours. Usually off for three hours in the peak morning, and three hours in the peak evening and on/heating for the other 18 hours of the day.
I thought it was unique to NZ but it seems many countries around the world use/used to use ripple control, and have since the 1940s
A very similar system, also called Ripple, operated in Kenya in the late eighties. It's amazing how long it's taking to become more mainstream.
@@aidandillon9520As an audio engineer I hated ripple control. No matter how hard you tried to filter them out the tones would break through & impose themselves into recordings being made at the time. They were barely audible, but nonetheless they ruined the recording. Had to stop & start again.
@@donnamarie3617 in Canada and the US we call this load shedding. (sometimes redlining in the south) Most often it was a relay on the air conditioner but sometimes also the electric hot water heater. (electric hot water isn't common here) it was 15-30min maximum at a time for usually a maximum of 1-2 hours a day. The problem is that it would take the ac the rest of the day to catch back up since it only happened at the hottest of days. Initially they did give a rebate on electricity, but they cut it out, so everyone stopped signing up for it. For a while they diverted the rebates to "programmable" thermostats (scheduled tstats) which didn't work for load shedding. Now some tstats like nest and ecobee do Demand load shedding which is actually somewhat hard to opt out of. Again no rebate on electricity.
We recently shifted heating of our hot water from night to day, when our solar panels power our house. So we don't need to draw from the grid to heat our water. It's a simple change which is very effective.
The Governor of California sent a text out to everyone in California to ask to save power. It worked. Automation of this will be easy.
Rosie, you have done it again, thank you.
Knowledge is power, dispelling, legacy energy system media, advocating for renewables competitors, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
California has shown that simply messaging consumers that reduced consumption is needed for 2 hours. There was a huge response and people reduced the energy consumption was reduced with no capital cost .
Yes it's amazing how much impact something so simple can have! I still think that to take it much further it's going to have to be much simpler and provide value to the customers as well as the utility.
Wow, it’s awful that the grid can’t supply normal demand.
@@andrealeong8714it can but it's extremely expensive, there need to be many whole power stations that only run at peak times, perhaps 2 separate half-hours per day, but the power station still has to be staffed, lit, maintained & boiler pressure kept up for the whole day in case there's a random extra peak. In places where load shedding operates those peak-only power stations can be scrapped, bringing the price down enormously.
I'm old enough to remember the rolling blackouts triggered by Enron in order for them to sidestep consumer protection regulations and sell electricity to themselves at outrageous rates passed on to households.
Hard to grasp that that was a quarter century ago.
It still doesn't excuse the more recent profiteering by PSE&G while they've done precious little to update their grid to deal with the changing demands of a growing population.
@@andrealeong8714 It is no normal demand when you have to message your customers. We have it here in Germany too. It happens about one time a year, and not for the whole country, but southern regions. If you build the grid for the hour with the most demand, it will be much more expensive. So everyone can safe.
Its something we do here in the UK with Octopus energy, we get a cheaper duel tariff rate if we allow the flexible charging of our EV. When there is a surplus of power we can have free electricity to use and in the winter we are paid to reduce usage in saving sessions for grid flexibility and demand response.
So spot on! I also think demand response has much much more potential than most people realize, including a lot of actual experts. General lighting is not an issue, not now, people won't have to stumble in darkness to save electricity in periods if high demand, the idea that they would is plain stupid. A led light bulb typically draws a few watts, while things like clothes dryers, water heaters, and EV chargers typically draws kilowatts, and it is often not that critical when the energy for them is taken from the grid.
There are led light bulbs on the market now that are ~15 times more efficient than old incandescent light bulbs, and 2-3 times more efficient than led light bulbs that was considered great just a few years ago, and are still common in stores.
Personally, I pay much less for electricity now, here in Europe, since soon after the energy crisis started, than I have for many years before that. In small part by switching to flexible tariff, and manually avoiding using much power when the price is high that I don't have to use right then. But also by replacing inefficient equipment. That is, my total cost for electricity has decreased a lot, even when I include costs for connection, and sharp increase of energy tax on electricity.
I do think most consumers will need automated systems for demand response, mostly systems that are automated for them, and those systems shouldn't cause any noticeable inconvenience, of any kind. I believe those systems needs not only to work well technically, but the user experience needs to be great in order for people to accept them fast.
Another outstanding video from the best engineering information and education channel on the web. Rosie is so very good. This is such an important key to a successful energy transition.
We're already seeing demand response mechanisms at play here in Sydney.
AGL have a "peak energy rewards" program - essentially they provide advance notice asking customers to keep consumption below a specific value for a 1, 2 or 3 hour period. Hit that target and you get a $5 credit for a 1 hour event, or a $10 credit for a 2-3 hour event. No penalty for not hitting the target.
Similar to your point about queuing up for cheap petrol, it's a mechanism that people can leverage if they want.
I had something similar with Origin, but the problem with it was that they would ask you to keep your usage a certain percentage lower than your average usage for that time window over the last (I think it was a month). But as we hit these targets it lowered our average usage and it became harder an harder to hit the targets they requested. it saved us a bit of money in the first 6 months but after that I stopped bothering to try and found a different plan after the 12month contract was up
Another great video.
I very much appreciate your ability to simplify complex topics.
This year BC Hydro started an optional time of day rate plan. Last month I earned $12 by shifing demand away from the evening and into the night. Not much, but I am happy to help reduce peak demand and reduce the need for new power generation projects. I set my EV to charge at night, set the heat pump to come on and heat the house before the rate goes up, and shift my use of hot water and appliances out of the 4-9pm highest cost time. Of course it helps that I am retired, and my solar generation means that for most of the year I draw no energy from the grid between 4pm and 6pm.
Thanks for the video Rosie! I have heard the "it will never work, the grid will melt when everybody will plug their EVs at the same time" argument and I find that fascinating that people don't think of their charger/electricity operator as smart enough to balance the load over time. I live in Sweden and I use Tibber as an electricity provider with a spot price tariff. Yes it was more expensive in 2022, but the range of prices within days was huge and Tibber, by default, makes the car charging as low cost as possible based on when you want the car to be ready, with which battery level, and the spot price. Now that the prices have come down it's still great value. I don't understand why it's not a thing everywhere...
I happen to live near a university that sports about 35 Nobel memorial prizes in economics, and they aren't touting market pricing for electricity yet. Look how far ahead of them you are!!
And thanks especially for showing the steps needed to do it, do it right, and avoid pitfalls.
We've been generally happy load shifting with Amber Electric here in Australia for a few years now.
Incredibly cheap for charging the EV on the weekend daytimes. We have timers on the heat pump HWS, dishwasher & washing machines.
There have been a few nasty price spike surprises on cold winter nights, but mostly avoid that with a wood fire.
We are soon to get a battery so that will make our lives a bit easier to manage with 5 minute dynamic pricing.
Also won't need a fire once the house gets fully insulated during the reno, just the RCAC.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Are your timers just actual timers doing the same thing every day, or are they communicating with Amber's price forecasts and adjusting accordingly?
@@EngineeringwithRosie
The (Reclaim Energy) HWS has an inbuilt timer, set for around 10am, but is Wi-Fi and ready for future grid signals.
The other appliances are manual which we also set for between 10 & 2pm
The battery will be automated with Amber's 'Smart Shift.
The main (but far from only) issue with Amber is exporting excess rooftop solar at a cost of several cents per kilowatt hour. As we can’t help having excess solar this boosted our electricity bills considerably. Their only ‘solution’ was to block the export of excess solar though in our case we had the wrong inverter to do this but this is what they are doing routinely for people with compatible inverters. So actually shutting off excess solar from reaching the grid seems like a total waste especially when solar was only supplying 50-60% of overall energy usage.
Also they would just take energy from our battery in the evening if there was a modest price spike so our battery would be depleted and later there was sometimes a higher spike but our battery was then low and then we had to buy energy on evenings when we would have been self sufficient. And they of course make an additional monthly charge for this service.
We quit because our energy bills had never been so high and we found it stressful not being in control. I wont be participating in the future.
@@robsengahay5614 Interesting! Thanks so much for sharing your personal experience.
Many moons ago homes in the UK were fitted with a "white meter" that only supplied electrical energy during a specified time period overnight. Consumers like myself installed simple timers to run immersion heaters, washing machines etc during those hours. This led to reduced bills and something for the nuclear power stations to do overnight. It was simple but effective. Just time shifting your loads.😊
Im so happy I left the ca. Power grid 8 years ago. My off grid solar system works so well.
Here in Quebec Canada , we have a demand response program that is slowly being adopted . I had several intelligent thermostats installed through an incentivized program last fall. The system allows to opt in at two levels or opt out at each event. Opting in pays $ per event. The incentive paid for 95 % of the equipment and installation in one winter .
We need workplace car charging to charge cars during peak solar, and also help EVs work for apartment dwellers who can't charge while they sleep
You need solar generated behind the meter for that to work. This means “rooftop solar above the carpark”. Without a direct connection between the solar panel and the car it’s a waste of time and the owner of the carpark is better off using the power for fixed tenancies like the local gym or supermarket. If I could pay $22 a day for parking but in the process also get 10-20 kWh of electricity in to my car without having to move it I would be strongly incentivised to a) buy an EV and drive it to work b) park it all day in the charging bay c) not charge at home at night.
So far nobody had bothered to roll out both solar panels and unmetered all day car charging in a car park
@@theairstig9164 Simons Londonderry in Edmonton has that.
Only 1 L3 and 2 L2 chargers. To get the umetered rate you need a Simons loyalty card tied to your Flo account.
The bass noises those power plants make when they ramp up and down are pretty neat! :)
I’ll be making use of demand response tomorrow. My supplier just emailed me to say at 1pm, all you can eat electricity.
I was going to pasteurise my water tonight so I’ve moved the timer instead. I’ll make sure I do the same with the washing machine and dishwasher; use them tomorrow afternoon instead of overnight.
We were planning on making a soup or stew tomorrow so that’ll get prepared early.
If I’ve space in the car I’ll even grab a few free miles too.
But for the vast majority of families with both parents working and the kids at school they are not home to use the cheaper electricity and if you want to trust turning machines on when you are not there then you are asking for trouble. Two relatives of mine incurred significant damage to their homes when operating a washing machine and a dishwasher when they were at work and they malfunctioned. Presumably if this same family had a BEV it would not be at home during the day either. I can see the benefit of altering your hot water heater but if you have one operating a Hydronic heating system then that would be of little use. Electricity is a utility service and is meant to fit a pattern that the majority of consumers use due to factors they cannot change. Consumers should not have to plan their lives around when generators can and can't make electricity. Electricity wholesalers see the demand based consumption model as a win for them increasing earnings as they will slug the poor people who cannot change their peak usage pattern with increased tariffs vis smart meters as they know the majority of working families cannot change their pattern.
@@frasercrone3838 most of the free energy sessions I’ve had lately have been at the weekend.
When my wife and I are not at work and my son isn’t at school.
For the ones in the middle of the weekday, I’ve had advance notice the day before so I’ve been able to schedule home battery charging, water tank and laundry to run.
I’ve no issue having things run, I have good quality appliances regularly checked for issues. I call bull on the “significant damage” by not only the dishwasher but the washer too.
@@frasercrone3838in the end you will pay for that flexibility or get reduced rates for being flexible.
Thanks Rosie great video! Flexible demand and time of use tariffs are a great incentive for people to become more involved in energy! There is one aspect to this, which will be hardest to achieve, because it is a cultural change. Most of us have been trained to switch off things when we are not around to use them. But for cooling and heating we will need to do precisely that: cooling the house during the day to be able to switch off the airco in the early evening or in colder climates heat the house maybe even more, to be able to not need it in the peak times. - One thing I also noticed: the latest generation of household appliances (using heatpumps) are so energy efficient now that shifting their load does only remove tiny spikes in my demand. I still try to run them when producing my own electricity, or electricity is cheap though. Such is the power of gamification!😅
Demand response has operated in the U.K. for years, but has only been rolled out to consumers in the last couple of years. Previously turn down was only communicated to heavy industrial electricity users . Over the last couple of years it has been run by the company that supplies electricity to your home, ( provided you have a smart meter). Reports have shown it has been reasonably effective, but as alluded to in the video a bit clunky, usually you being advised the day before by text or email that if you reduce your electricity consumption for an hour then you get a small credit to your bill. The peak demand for electricity in the U.K. is usually between 4pm to 7pm in the winter. A big step forward for those with an EV ( like me) is when vehicle to grid is rolled out. I would be happy to supply electricity to the grid at peak times for a credit, I already charge my EVs when my tariff is cheap overnight.
Great video giving more detail on the pros & cons of demand response
Rosie, the thing that is missing from a demand response system in Australia is trust. Many have experienced gouging by our electricity suppliers/distributors. Those of us burnt by this behaviour are not likely to be open to a demand response scheme.
I'm with Octopus in the UK. My tariff is cheaper at night for car charging. It's also just about worth washing clothes at night on the cheaper power but it's a bit of a faff. My arrangement involves very little sophistication.
They have a more automated system available, but I haven't got myself set up for it yet. I think I have a very restricted choice of cooperating car chargers for the automated hookup (via IOT?).
There's at least one other electricity supplier operating similar demand management options. I'm amazed that New Mexico still has a completely dumb system.
Excellent job
Brilliant topical practicality!
Rosie, did you make this video in response to what happened in the UK a "few" days ago? It was due to a failure in the Norwegian interconnect cable to work properly. Electrical suppliers instead used people's power walls and EVs to balance the UK grid (which they paid the people providers a lot of money £0.50p credit was talked about).
Or was this a happy coincidence seeing you planned and made this video weeks ago!
So the rich folks gadgets saved us all, but tax-payers have to find "a lot of money"? A technical triumph, but so expensive.
@@cheesyptpno, the taxpayers didn't feature in it. The UK grid and suppliers are private, shareholder owned companies.
An instance of where privatisation actually provided a benefit....😮
@@rugbygirlsdadg ok, thanks
In Ontario, Canada, time of use pricing is very fixed and doesn't make a lot of sense. Shifting major loads until after 11pm isn't very easy for most people. With the exception of ev charging it doesn't help much.
A lot of the time of use tariffs here are similar, bizarrely unrelated to the pricing in the wholesale market. But we also have some good small companies who get it.
@@EngineeringwithRosieI think the DNSPs in Australia are really trying to balance cost reflective pricing with simplicity for consumers. That’s why in Victoria, most DNSPs are moving to peak periods of 4pm to 9pm so that it reflects when demand is highest, but also creates certainty for residential customers as to when to shift their usage using timers. Not everyone wants to be fully exposed to electricity markets and the more complicated you make electricity pricing, the less compliance you will get since consumers will give up trying to change their behaviour.
@@chickennoodle6620 obviously I can't speak for the Australian market but with us it's so oversimplied with only 3 options everyone has given up. You can be on flate rate, regular time of use which the times don't make it easy for any meaningful load shifting, and a special EV TOS which has very low nighttime prices but gouging peak pricing.
@@SuperS05 Interesting. Here in Victoria, there is flat, TOU plans where you can have peak (4pm-9pm) and off-peak (all other times) periods, or as you described, TOU plans that allow you to use electricity for free/ at low tariff for a few hours in the middle of the day or over night to charge an EV. The two period TOU does work out cheaper if you are able to run your electricity loads during the day (when there is solar) or at night, and don't use much in the evening, but it's heavily dependent on if someone will be at home or can set timers to run the appliances during the day. If people are out from 9-5 and you can't schedule appliances, TOU will end up more expensive.
My concern with making it more dynamic (apart from messaging people to reduce load during peak periods, or paying them credit to do so), is whether people will actually check current pricing of electricity to make their decisions? A simpler tariff scheme that approximates when there is greater demand for electricity is simpler to make decisions around.
Hi Rosie, you just nailed it! These are all the reasons why I decided to build Powerlake. It's all about helping people to pay less for energy with a decentralised and market-driven approach to flexible demand. The key is to improve our "Energy Profiles" to match production more closely, and more broadly too than the simple "export minimisation" goal that many solar owners employ. The majority of hot water systems, pool pumps & EV chargers in Australia can use this market-based technology with ZERO impact on day-to-day life. Importantly it means that not everyone needs solar and a battery. I would love to hear your thoughts if you're looking for solutions in the space!
There's nothing about it on your channel?
@@alanhat5252 Yeah sorry about that, I'm developing from the core service out, so RUclips videos will be one of the last major things I create. The website itself only just started looking half decent after a few years of developing the service. Vids are definitely high up on the to-do now.
@@swademcYTsounds great. I already have a Combined Energy home energy management system built on top of a Solarhart electric hot water heater. It's fantastic and has saved us lots of $$ already. Best of all Combined Energy are based in Hobart where I live!
An important point: You don't have to shut down your light or computer to safe the grid. These ones are consuming so little, it doesn't matter. Living comfort is dropping too much by changing habits without making a big difference. But turning your air conditioning unit off for 2 hours or putting your water heater on on different hours will help. Here some examples in consumption, to see the difference:
10 Watt: LED light for one room
100 Watt: Office PC with 2 monitors
1000 Watt: air conditioning for one room, heat pump tumble dryer
2000 Watt: Each large cooking field on your stove, the oven, the water kettle, washing machine, dishwasher, classic tumble dryer ...
5000 Watt: Central electric water heating
10.000 Watt: EV charging, central air conditioning, sauna...
Excellent video. My one addition is in areas that have a lot of solar generation, you want to figure out where the cars are parked during solar hours, and install chargers there.
Who pays for the installation and how do they make their money back? That seems to be the question nobody has an answer to. Unless of course it’s “the end user and you’re going broke because the end user has cheaper options” which would explain why nobody has done it yet
@@theairstig9164 Gas isn't free. Electricity doesn't need to be either. It needs to be readily available. There are a lot of people who don't own their own home. They need a convenient place to charge. If somebody drives to work, and work during the day, then a charger at work is the way to go.
The reverse of this is encouraging use of energy during off-peak periods, and giving extra incentives when it's especially windy off-peak.
Octopus in the UK is really innovative in this area.
I have an EV which I plug in and octopus controls my charger. I tell them how much I want added and by when, and they decide how to achieve that. I can override it if necessary.
I charge my household battery off-peak and haven't paid peak rates for electricity since I signed up for my EV tariff.
Each country will have different requirements based on climate. Oz, and the southern US has heavy daytime load for Aircon in summer. The UK is the opposite, mostly heavy use in winter for heating and clothes drying.
Dynamic pricing has been great for me. I'm on the Octopus Tracker tariff in the UK (prices change daily), it has been consistently cheaper than even the Government price controls. But it's great for both electricity and gas pricing.
It can be a little bit worrying about potential spikes in wholesale prices, but that's where economic substitution plays an important role, currently gas is 5p per kWh, which is really quite good. But if it goes over 7p per kWh I can always start heating the house with coal instead on the multi-fuel stove. It would be more reassuring if I also had a substitution option for electricity as well, perhaps I should look into the capital and running costs of a diesel generator.
Can you sign a contract where the supplier promises to turn off power when the price reaches a threshold?
@@anotherelvis The Octopus Tracker caps out at 100p per kWh, which is a lot (I could spend up to £100 per day with high winter usage if it went up to that price).
It would be better to have a system like you say where you can set it to simply turn off when it goes over your desired limit, but there's nothing I know of that would do that. But you still want some kind of substitution (coal, diesel, solar, wind etc.) or you'll essentially be without energy during periods of extremely high prices.
Wouldn't you (and the planet) be better off investing in a home battery system than burning coal or diesel? 🤔
@@rugbygirlsdadg No, I had Octopus also quote for a solar and battery system and it came in at £8,100 for a 3.5kw system with a 4.16kw battery . I would also have to get a heat pump which average installation in the UK is £12k. (also heat pumps are a terribly expensive way to heat your home).
So if I instead take the £20k and put it in a savings account I will have over £1k per year in interest. This is just shy of what I use each year to buy all the gas, electricity and coal I need.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a great idea. One issue, though, that needs to be considered is consumer setpoints lining up. Picture if everyone set there evs to charge when rates drop below 11c/kwhr, as soon as the utility dropped below that, demand would surge within seconds, and then when the utility went back above that limit to stop the surge demand would disappear. That could create a cycle capable of bringing down the grid.
I would suggest that the solution would be to require consumer devices to add a random value, on the order of hundredths of a penny to their setpoint. So if I set my ev to charge at 11c/kwhr, internally, the car generates a random value, let's say +$.0012, and adds that in to use as the true setpoint 11.12 c/kwhr. That would effectively smooth out the demand around the whole number prices for the utility.
A colleague with Octopus signed up for their demand management scheme and was paid for using power earlier or later than evenings.
With the price of power on the spot market dropping to near zero during periods of peak renewable production in some regions like California, it now makes sense to store energy as heat at the household level. So for example, you could have the utility heat your hot water to 200°F while power is free thanks to the over abundance of solar energy, then cut the heat entirely in the evening as costs on the grid spike. Hot water heater tanks can maintain that high temperature for hours, and a mixer valve can ensure scalding water never exits the hot water heater by mixing it with cold water as it comes out, to your predefined preferred temperature.
Likewise, during the summer while power is free mid-day, the utility can drop your air conditioning thermostat to your preferred minimum indoor temperature - say, 66°F - and then kill the compressor during the evening while demand spikes and supplies sag. Your compressor would remain off until your home hit some predefined maximum temperature, say 80°. Even in hot weather, a well-insulated home chilled to 66° can stay under 80° for many hours without needing to run a power-hungry compressor.
I suspect in any location where homes are routinely air-conditioned, much of the excess, free power being generated midday can be stored as heat (or cold) in homes and businesses essentially for free, using existing hot water tanks and air conditioning systems, with the only requirement being the addition of smart, grid-aware thermostats.
What would make *_more_* sense would be to *_ban wind-and-solar from any grid._*
@@aliendroneservices6621 That would be nonsense.
@@aliendroneservices6621 My jurisdiction (Alberta) actually did that! (For a period of 6 month in order to bring in onerous new regulations.)
It made "energy" investors nervous, even if they were planning of developing more traditional fossil fuel plants.
I have it in my head that the reason was to prop up the price of Natural Gas: making electricity more expensive.
A comprehensive solution requires devices to communicate in real time with relevant sources including grid, local PV output, battery status etc and use this intelligently to adjust load accordingly, and I suggest to use an interface that can be tweaked locally. One example is having deep freezer that "super cools" when power is cheap/free and provide only minimal cooling necessary when power is more expensive. Hot water systems are obviously similar. Other equipment may require something different again, the key point here is the protocols and the communication channels. Even with a solar battery, other devices such as HWS and deep freezers can supplement energy storage. Hot tubs are another good example.
I think this is the biggest technical challenge to be solved -- find a standardised way to control appliances and create easily used energy management systems for households. Currently you have to be an energy nerd to integrate all those components, but when it finally works, it's great.
Oversized appliances are a solution. I'm sure the appliance manufacturers in Europe are hoping for something like that. Larger water heating tanks for example would work as a thermal battery.
Excellent video! 🎉😊
Hi. Thanks, I appreciate all your good work in this space. In Western Australia I am currently paying $A 0.08/kw h for power between 9:00 and 15:00 each day. This variable price is available to anyone for the cost of having a smart meter installed, and the supplier is happily absorbing the costs and benefits of the remaining variabilities. Our car charger is set to only deliver power during that time, and we are able to do all of our charging at that price without a lot of thinking or risk. This setup doesn't involve any special connectivity or external control. Clearly a some further improvement could be made with a thoroughly smart system, but I think this improvement should be compared with what is possible more simply now. I understand that WA is more than usually blessed with solar power, but in any case I think that simpler systems to manage demand should be considered.
I am also in Perth. Two suggestions. I start charging my ev from my home battery at 3am. It uses the left over sunshine from the previous day, empties the home battery to make better use of the battery during the day, and has the car charging whilst I am asleep! By about 7am the sun takes over the car charging.
Second we need to encourage TransPerth to put three pin outlets at all the carparks at the train stations. If cars sop up the excess energy between 10am and 3pm, they won't put demand up so high in the evening.
Grid planners know that demand response is our future and utilities need to offer rate plans that reward customer behavior. Smart meters with clever phone apps that give consumers control of HVAC, water heaters, EV's, etc could automate this to make it easy to save money.
Mind you, this would require basically scrapping most of your home appliances for remote controllable ones. As much as I would like to have it, the only thing I have timing control of right now is the dryer and washing mashine, which have internal timers (no remote capability) - the rest can't do, simple remote switches won't do the job. This will take somemtime to change.
@@wernerviehhauser94 Well, you could put the incentives in place and then encourage people to switch as their old appliances break down/ need to be replaced.
@@chickennoodle6620 ONCE my stuff breaks, I will get remote controllable ones. But basically all of it is over 15 years old and I still get new spare parts for cheap (just ordered new dampeners for the washing mashine for less than 20 bucks, and a lot of spares can be 3D printed) and they are usually installed quickly - so I do still ask myself if it is really that beneficial to replace the device, weighing the prospect of energy savings against cost and energy requirements of a new one....
A large part of the morning peak demand is industrial cooling and heating systems, turned on prior to people arriving at work (shopping centers, commercial building, teaching institutions, business etc). All of these are set to fixed start times, controlled by automatic timers. Many of these will be set to start on the hour or half hour, leading to sudden peak usage. A well-developed algorithm could be developed which would give preset starting times, derived from location on the grid, cooling requirement, maximum starting load etc, resulting in a much more efficient delivery of power.
Thanks for emphasising this, Rosie. People should be looking to get devices that are smart and which can be automated and communicate with demand response services. Octopus Energy in the UK can already control some compatible batteries, cars and EVSEs.
I agree wholeheartedly, but would like to propose some nuances:
1) (indeed) a guaranteed maximum pricetag cap - this could be "a-la-carte" choosable by the customer, as a trade-off for a discount on the average pricetag. Something like "5x the mean" seems reasonable, to avoid Texan debacles.
2) A guaranteed upper limit for the four cheapest hours during any contiguous period of 24 hours; this may be seasonally variable, with a reasonable, pre-agreed fluctuation.
3) The facility to reabsorb your self-generated (e.g. home-solar) energy into your own sink (e.g. E.V.) for a reasonable transport-surcharge, say 10% of the instantaneous purchase-price, at least within "driving distance" of your generators.
These would not de-incentivize sellers, and would strongly motivate buyers (users and generators); they are not technologically challenging to implement (and are far preferable to having to increase production by twenty-something percent).. Home-heating and EVs (I expect) would be able to contribute most, benefitting sources as well as sinks.
Hi Rosie. Would having A/C shutdown for 10 seconds every minute during peak demand be a good way of reducing demand. After all each unit would be using 16% less power, without having a huge impact on household cooling.
We'll implement that in the upcoming year. The devices required (smart meter, home energy management system) is already there. Only the dynamic electricity tariff is still missing but from 2025 on, every electricity vendor in has to offer a dynamic tariff in Germany. Needless to say that the price has to be somehow forwarded to the HEMS for it to take advantage of the fluctuations.
In the UK "Economy 7" was introduced in October 1978, it offered 7 hours at 20% reduced price overnight & slightly more expensive during the day but it depended on a clock inside the meter which was tied to the 50Hz supply so had to be reset at the quarter-year meter reading and after every power cut by an official meter reader. The tariff is still available but with a more reliable clock.
The Wikipedia page lists several alternatives.
The UK also has pumped-storage hydro to compensate the nuclear not varying output. (Electricity is a by-product of the manufacture of weapons-grade fissile materials in the reactor core, the cores are shut down at intervals to harvest the material, I believe on a 3-month cycle, so they're not designed for the second-by-second control required to match demand & cannot achieve it now that the demand for fissile materials is reduced).
Not sure if you’ve heard Rosie but apparently some electricity networks in Australia (eg NSW’s Ausgrid) and retailers (eg Shell, Iberdrola) are getting rid of shoulder tariffs or charging them same rates as peak when they used to be between peak and off-peak. This really takes out the incentive to use more power during the middle of the day which was usually shoulder tariff during the week. It does however incentivise installing solar PV with battery energy storage.
Hospitals have backup power for emergency purposes. How many surgeons and ER Doctors have you discussed this idea with, what was their reaction?
Yeah, much better to use gas peakers than backup generators. It was a very bad example. We shouldn't rely on a hospital reducing its demand either as that would be $10 billion of capital going idle plus $1mill per hour in wages not being used effectively.
I think we will find many capital expensive applications the costs are too great for them to reduce their demand on a dime. Eg $100billion data centre reducing its demand by 20% has a cost of $10 mill per day in lost revenue.
Excellent video, Rossie.
The other extreme is coming.
Customers with rooftop PV and OVERSIZED battery in their V2G EVs not wanting any grid electricity.
The $TRILLIONS Australian national electrical grid needs $100sBILLIONS from millions and millions and millions of customers.
Dead CASH FLOW is an extremely dangerous economic future for the Australian national electrical grid.
I bet that the grid will want customers to remain connected and oversize their rooftop to be the suppliers of dirt cheap electricity.
The grid will use the existing grid to supply the new demand from heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels.
The logic is overwhelming.
The grid will be repurposed.
The grid is too valuable and fragile and will be protected and maintained.
New CASH FLOW is the key.
Oh for the days before our grid was privatised, when the power suppliers just worked for the public good and no complicated market operation was necessary. Renewables subsidies could have gone to central, public solar and wind farms, benefitting all Australians, not excluding renters and apartment dwellers. Just big energy farms would have economies of scale to buy and maintain the equipment, providing way bigger bang for our subsidy-buck than rooftop solar. A government monopoly could offer such Demand Response options but there would be no $9000/MWh wholesale prices to begin with.
effective energy demand response is one of the reasons why people should demand free internet
What I see as being a viable method to achieve frictionless central demand response is to take the inverters that are already used to produce renewable AC, and use them to encode some simple data into the alternating sine wave. Something simple and standardized that device and appliance manufacturers can easily build decode, that just relays price signals, that way the device, say a fan, can switch to low mode at high prices and high mode at low prices. If we rely on people choosing to turn things off or switch to a low power setting, that'll never work. But allow for universal price signal reading in real time, and products will start being sold that can do that work automatically
Here on the west coast of Florida, Duke Energy uses what I believe is called a load shedding device that is connected to the HVAC unit and Duke has control of the that system. They give the household a small discount for the installation and control of the unit. The down side of this device with Duke in control is that the daily summer temperature are in the mid to upper 90 degrees (F). At times it can get a little uncomfortable for short periods of time. Not a big fan of this plan, but eventually it will become mandatory along with net-metering (ToD), which will force me to write a program to switch the HVAC from Duke to Solar and back again when Duke activates/deactivates the unit. I will not have enough solar/battery to run the HVAC all day. If I go with this programming it will help the grid even more than the device.
In Phoenix , Arizona it get hotter than hell here. To balance the load, we allow the power company to turn our AC up a few degrees during high demand periods.
I've been alluding to the importance of this topic, since I've subscribed to this channel. Since nobody covers a topic is thoroughly as you do. So this post was sorely needed. But I would have liked to hear a little bit about TOU time of use tariff pricing which is related to the subject matter (Maybe in a future post you could touch on it?)
In Ontario, Canada, while load shedding is opt in, it is marketed as green incentives so most people don't understand it. Once setup it isn't easy to override and in some cases against the contract.
I think it will require a big wakeup to the utilities that they are not going to get full control over this, nor get the full value from it. They're going to have to learn how to share with their customers if they want to reach the full possibility of demand response!
@@EngineeringwithRosie unfortunately the utility is public run even though they pretend to be neutral, there's clearly a lot of politics at play. We don't really have any small good providers here. Mostly just scams.
Must admit when we were approached about installing a smart meter and using an on demand plan it seemed more like a penalty system rather than a benefit system as I found I could not really change my usage. Basically only the washing machine could be changed to low tariff, cooking, no, fridge no, hot water no, lighting no, air conditioning no. In addition the on demand was totally rigged I.e. the peak instantaneous usage was then applied as if that usage was for the whole hour, unbelievable!
Sounds like a great ad for nuclear power.
Nuclear power stations are not very good at following load, they are used for base load. So nuclear plus renewables would still need demand response
@@drigans2065Wind and solar are pure baseload fuels. They cannot load-follow, and they cannot respond to peak demand. Any storage is used to fill in their holes.
@@drigans2065 How you imagine "renewables" respond on demand if they depend on weather and time of the day? Nuclear power stations can easily follow load. France is doing exactly that - they decrease power of nuclear fleet to make place for intermittent power sources, thus making their capacity factor much lower for nuclear stations than it could be.
@@valdisvi The way France's nuclear power follows demand is that when ever they have too much power, they sell it to other countries, the UK often buys it at negative price! Regularly changing the power output of a nuclear plant is not a good idea. Wind turbines can very easily be shut down when not needed.
ls it just me that sees an enormous opportunity for home/business owners to reduce their energy costs overall ? Just as people did when they invested in home solar years ago. An upfront investment resulted in years and years of very cheap electricity recouping the outlay quickly. Now with home batteries and V2G evs , surely there is money to be made ? According to Saul Griffith , home and transport energy costs are a major part of the household budget. Seems like a no brainer to me and the national grid benefits as well. More efficient households and a more efficient grid means cheaper energy overall . Cheaper energy overall means that all of society benefits. A classic win win.
In the UK Tesco supermarkets (& I believe others) turn off all their freezers for one hour when they get a signal.
If we add three pin outlets at train station car parks, we could sop up excess solar power in the day time and reduce demand when people get home in the evening. Call it "Plug and Pray" and don't guarantee electricity will be provided. If you get five hours of granny charging it is a bonus, if you don't nothing lost.
Also add “armed police to patrol the car parks so the petty thieves don’t harvest the conductors”
@@theairstig9164 L2 chargers won't have a huge amount of copper.
Seems that in many dwellings turning off the heat/ac and having your battery power the grid should be no problem depending on duration and compensation!
Vehicle battery switch from charging to discharging to grid should be more widespread and obviously highly compensated
Totally agree!
It seems some electricity suppliers are resisting installing bi-directional meters. 😢
Here in Meadow Springs 6210 the government has a trial of a community battery bank. Apart from storing electricity, and buffering demand, it could also manage connected smart meters.
On a smaller scale, governments could install smaller scale batteries in select peoples' homes to aid a group of nearby premises, even if the actual residence has no solar panels. The reward would be cheaper power for the residents. I would select homes of rentals, primarily those people receiving social security benefits and the like.
In several places people are getting just a battery & bi-directional meter & saving huge amounts of money, sometimes this upload of power is done on a timer & sometimes it's triggered by the grid.
Self-demand management needs to be packaged up into easy to install & configure systems for the average householder.
I’ve done it with the Shelly range of Smart Home products linked by Home Assistant. (pool pump, washing machine, dryer & water heater are turned on/paused depending on own solar output, forecast weather & TOU power costs). Works fantastically at reducing my grid demand at peak times.
However, physically integrating the Shelly modules into the appliances & linking to action commands in HA would be well beyond all but technonerds.
These types of Smart Home modules need to be incorporated into all high wattage appliances being sold to provide sufficient demand response capability in the future. If included during manufacture, would probably only be $5 extra.
I foresee a future where superfluous energy is stored in homes and used in factories, etc.
More efficient/cheaper solar and cheaper/safer batteries will come to market in the next ten years.
We do need to move towards super efficient heat exchangers and far superior insulation though.
Proof of concept is already here, now we simply need to improve the technologies and reduced the cost.
In my childhood I lived in Soviet Union where we "built communism" and demand was regulated. It ended up with everybody getting nothing (everything was so called "deficit") and with collapse of entire Soviet Union. Relying on intermittent and diluted power sources to build "Net Zero" strongly reminds me Soviet Union, therefore I worry that it will end similarly - nobody will get needed energy and whole system will collapse.
What about investing in large flywheel energy storage devices for storage so you have energy available in high peak times. You avoid the predatory private sector pricing that way.
Some demand response is a really good idea eg heating your water, or cooling your house in summer during the day especially if you have solar.
But
With lots of battery we can match demand and supply so simply.
Thete are reports in china of batterries for vehicles costing $50Kwh. At this price batterries are the long tetm solution to matching supply to demand when using renewables
"People expect the lights to turn on when they flip the switch"
Of course they do, but that's an extreme example. That's an immediate need, yet so low power it doesn't really matter. There are many loads where people absolutely won't care or even notice. So long as they're comfortable, only the most paranoid people will care when their heating/cooling runs. Same with an EV, all good so long as it has enough charge when they need it. I personally wouldn't care most of the time when the washer or dryer runs, so long as the spin cycle doesn't start when I'm asleep.
I suppose it boils down to whether you directly interact with the load, or whether it's set and forget and all you care about is that it's done by some deadline.
Dynamic pricing that gives you the day ahead auction prices is a big step in the right direction. But it also creates this growing problem that a lot of people will switch on power consumers right at the turn of the hour, which creates a huge spike, which is a big redispatch event that costs a lot of money. Same with the case where a big chunk of the current load drops off at the turn of the hour and suddenly you need to get rid of a lot of excess energy quickly.
Would need real time electricity pricing. With price groups. By changing the prices per group in real time it should prevent the kind of issues you mention. For example instead of prices dropping for everyone at the same time it's done gradually at different rates for different groups. A self learning algorithm would definitely be able to handle that. Besides batteries can handle any major load changes. Apparently in the UK recently there was a problem with a power interconnect. A large drop in available power occurred but was rapidly corrected with battery systems.
As the world moves to 100% solar, wind and hydro + battery storage, demand response will be MUCH easier as we won't need giant power plants burning stuff, 24/7, even when that power can't be used. ALL fossil fuel power plants are built to deliver ~25% wasted energy, which is insane!
You don't have to get cold by turning off the heating. I use a Homely smart thermostat on my heat pump, and it over heats the house just before an expensive time, then switches off at peak time, so still off at peak, but you are not sacrificing being warm.
I'm planning an energy makeover for my house that we just bought so I'm loving the tips for good products that can make energy use smart
@@EngineeringwithRosieapparently Pylontech rackmount (blade) batteries integrate very nicely with home automation giving you enormous scope for matching supply/demand with your lifestyle (& the charts are very pretty 😊). You'll have to decide whether that beats your new wheeled battery.
What about black Swan events that stress the system, how will a renewal dominated grid handle unusual events?
Great vid as usual
You may have seen that Octopus have just launched 'Mercury' where they're inviting smart tech makers to collaborate with developing common API standards for heating & energy systems.
I'm on a plan with wholesale market exposure and almost all the market forecasting is done by looking at the weather, which I do anyway.
If electric cars take off, (have one but I am starting to wonder), we have to have demand response, as the grid will not be able to take the higher peak load. It is all ready starting. My son has got a deal where he gets free electricity in the middle of the day when solar is at it's peak. Guess when he is heating his hot water ( a heat pump with enough smarts to set the time of heating), washing, dish washing, heating (remember those heaters that stored heat at off peak times, he brought one), cooling, charging is Tesla wall. Free electricity, heating the concrete slab once again is an option.
This further erodes the grid as an equitable public utility and creates a two-class system of power consumers: those who own their own homes and have complete control over how much electricity they generate, consume, and export, and those who are almost entirely at the mercy of consuming electricity at whatever rate they are charged.
No that's actually not true at all! The standard for rooftop solar where households with solar get paid to export no matter the need for that power, that has the effect you describe. But demand response means that everyone on the grid gets the benefit of avoiding grid upgrades to deal with increasing peak power requirements. I do agree that access to the network will need to be priced fairly, i.e. it shouldn't be a volumetric charge because then that would do what you say and mean that people with panels and batteries pay barely anything to be connected, which wouldn't be fair.
The more people that engage with this then the less that electricity will cost since it'll save us building a **** tonne of batteries and burning a **** tonne of fuel.
My concern with "virtual power plants" is that every proposal I have seen is proprietary, and unlikely to interoperate well as a result.
The Canadian electrical code was recently changed: such that a service upgrade is no longer needed for installing Level 2 EV charging: so long as a whole house monitoring system, called an Electric Vehicle Energy Management System (EVEMS), is installed.
However smart water heaters often come with competing system managed by the manufacturer. I can see a case where the utility operator requests that that water heater company shed load: only for the load shed to be undermined by the EVEMS deciding it is safe to start charging again, since the water heater dropped off.
I would prefer to manage my loads through Home Assistant: but I am not sure that can be made "fail safe" enough to qualify as an EVEMS. I suppose having the charger default to a low power state in the absence of a heartbeat signal from Home Assistant may be enough.
I would like to have zone HVAC rather than one big unit. I could run one small unit during peak time to save money.
I love the subjects that you cover. Thanks for giving us more information to help us think. One suggestion; I am from the U.S. and to me you have an accent. If you could, slightly, slow down your speaking, it would allow better comprehension of the info you are sharing. Just I.M.O.
I hope you could give a compare and contrast post in the future between centralized and decentralized demand response models?Since decentralized/Blockchain database models also have some downsides. Such as greater energy requirements. I get it decentralization seems more democratic and utopian, but the devils in the details. So what seems to be obvious on face value isn't always the case.
Keep wondering with Oz having so few residences whether privatisation in th ee1990's was worth it. If the SEC for Victoria would continued then they could control and expand most sensibly.
Wait I can buy offline from Bunnings online??!
Yep. Go to the special orders desk.
Climate change is a minor problem that we can address because we have lots of time to prepare and plan
2:50 It's *_"Mountain"_* singular:
"RMI, formerly known as the Rocky *_Mountain_* Institute, is a think tank in the United States co-founded by Amory Lovins..." (Wikipedia)
Destabilizing the grid and making electricity more expensive is extremely counterproductive. None of this “energy transition” talk makes much sense when the end result is nothing more than inferior service, increased costs, decreased convenience and safety, all so big pots of money can be moved from the consumer to the provider (where the only real benefits are realized).
@superspeeder, you can’t reasonably argue for convenient or safety when the thing we are trying to prevent through this effort, a global climate meltdown, is the biggest safety, security and societal risk humanity has ever faced besides nuclear armed conflict. Austria’s in a relatively good spot when it comes to renewables and grid stability. Count your blessings! I’m jealous.
Great video. Perhaps we need to pay some electricity providers to act as standby emergency insurance.
or millions of households with batteries...
@@alanhat5252 Centralized hubs of batteries would have a smaller cost of service and installation, but we need a way to ensure that we can trust them.
So for many customers I agree the local storage is the best solution.
Interesting Rosie you are into market-based mechanisms. The NEM structure isn't optimal to handle demand response, as FCAS is a market unavailable to consumers, even in aggregate. In this new world, we should all play a role in FCAS, implying radical reform to NEM or reintroduction of direct government controls such as in Vic.
How much did Octopus Energy pay Rosie? This reads like an advert. She does 'consultancy' for them.
I didn't talk to Octopus for this video (I have spoken to people from the company before) and I didn't get paid by them. I just looked for examples of companies that made it through the crises I mentioned in the video and chose Octopus because they were involved in both Texas and UK, so made a simpler way to tell the story than having a different company for each event.
This video included an advert for Ecoflow, not Octopus. Octopus was just an interesting example of reasonable competence when the rest of the Texas grid operators were failing wildly.
Nordpool already tries to do it. Once an hour by price. But now they consider 15 minute cycles. I don't think it works well because.. well, prices are set a day ahead.
That's a whole new topic I knew nothing about, thank you.
Weather (and other) forecasts are quite accurate a day ahead. So you can actually do some of this manually by just seeing that the price will drop. You might do a lot of things involving heating water at that time.
Most of the big energy use items are easy enough to time shift - heating water, charging big batteries.
A different perspective to save life on the Earth. The electricity supply is important infrastructure and security in any country, and should not be left to the private market which is shark soup and sometimes called the Thatcher model 2. What every country needs is a unified State supply of the most environmentally friendly supply mechanisms on the ground, in the water, in the air and solar radiation. The profit grab syndrome of the privateers, or rather the pirateers is so last century, as are fossil fuels, and if push comes to a shove nuclear power. The latter two are a danger to the health of life on the living planet, which is now on life support. Let's not allow minor tech for incremental efficiency gains in monetary profit and savings get in the way of saving planetary life. Is there any other life form on the planet other than humans that screws its fellows for a cent a kilowatt hour? It's about time the thatcher - reagan duo and cronyism were thrown in the dustbin of history. I realise this is not quite on the topic of 'demand response', but everything we do cannot be geared to the monetary profit of corporations and their owners. People need a change of perspective and attitude in everything, if we are to reasonably survive the next several decades. Privateering corporate politics doesn't care about anything much other than short term profits.
Thatcher & Reagan's Neoliberalism seems to have been first implemented by Chile's dictator General Pinochet which says it all for me.
Current variations on Neoliberalism seem to involve a _lot_ of backhanders to politicians which may make it difficult to get rid of, in the UK the only party offering something different is the Green Party & the popular Press has taken on the mission of disparaging them so they won't get elected into Government any time soon 😢
You use lighting as an illustration for demand. It would instead be relevant to talk of high consumption devices as the primary target.
As mentioned, these include air condition, heating and EVs. These tend to be more modern and easier to control intelligently (in particular EVs). You should mention the vast base of older, non-smart controlable, appliances (washing machines, dryers, dish washers) - none of which has any level of smart control.
SO, the whole new control sceme requires appropriate controls built into devices (as seen in heat pumps and EVs). These will allow intelligent apps to control the devices - perhaps primitive timing, perhaps intelligent load balancing.
Here in Canada we have a complete nutjob in the environmental minister's chair. Next year please come to Canada and do some outreach and education in Ottawa.
What did the honourable Steven Guilbeault do to you?
Edit:
Most recent thing he did was announce new regulations two weeks ago that include:
- A right to a healthy environment
- Restrictions of chemical testing on vertebrates
- Category regulation of "forever chemicals" (announcement did not go into detail but mentioned non-stick cookware, second speaker, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, mentioned polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)).
- Investigation of a few dozen "chemicals of concern" from a health and safety point of view, including flame retardants.
@@jamesphillips2285 Just look at the economy. Isn't that enough?
@@markbernier8434 What does that have to do with anything?
E/R. You're forgetting the current and in-situ examples of Kalgoorlie in 2023 and Broken Hill right now in 2024 ? ? It's great looking at 'demand response' as a mechanism in the tool kit for our future energy transition, except this has no "Emergency Response" effects ! ! V.
I allow my electricity provider to adjust my AC during peak demand.