[alehul]

> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway

I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace.

Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.

[ben_w]

This already occurred back when renewables were nothing more than the fantasies of tree-hugging hippies like my mum.

Before I left the UK, the flat I lived in had two electricity rates, with the night rate being significantly cheaper then the day rate [0]. This meant the water heater and the (electric) storage heaters [1] were powered at night, when schools and offices used no power.

[0] I’m not certain, but I think it was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater

[makomk]

That has the advantage that the drop in power demand during the night is extremely predictable, so everyone knew that they could reliably get cheap power for heating just by shifting their demand by half a day. (Also, the UK had and still has a fairly large nuclear power fleet which generally runs full-out 24/7, and this kind of demand shifting is a good match for that.) The trouble with renewables is that a lot of the drops in supply are both unpredictable and relatively long, which makes them hardre to deal with.

Also, storage heaters are a real pain to deal with. They're inefficient and not very controllable in terms of the amount of heat they produce.

[ben_w]

> The trouble with renewables is that a lot of the drops in supply are both unpredictable and relatively long, which makes them hardre to deal with.

Not so; when the problem is bad weather rather than the diurnal cycle, even weather forecasting gives more forewarning than emergency stop buttons in power stations, and (given the geographical distribution) the change itself is smoother. On the scale of a continental grid, do you even need to care about anything besides diurnal storage/demand-shifting (as preferred) and seasonal issues?

[7thaccount]

I agree it would be unpopular, but it's what the US has been pushing towards for a long time with deregulation and it's the dream of the economists as the prices should be more transparent and optimal.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

In my country we already have a system where the price of electricity fluctuates hourly depending on supply and demand.

The result for individuals: many people just subscribe to a flat rate from the electricity companies to avoid the uncertainty and pay the same predictable price each month (but of course, this predictable price comes at a significant markup with respect to the "free market" price). The rest of us go with the fluctuating price but just don't bother, because we are not going to spend substantial amount of time every day looking at how the prices evolve to decide when we turn stuff on or off. So we just read the bill every two months, not even making an effort to understand it, grumble a bit and go on with our lives. I suppose there may be some people who actually try to optimize, but I don't know any - from what I know, people short on income tend to go with the flat rate because they can't afford the uncertainty.

I don't know how it works in industrial applications. I do know that some industries (e.g. steel) complain about the fluctuating prices because they operate 24/7, and basically they reaction is that if the government doesn't subsidize their electricity bill, they'll just close and go to some other country. So my guess is it's not really working either.

[7thaccount]

Interesting comment. Thank you! Does anyone have an automated system in place that would automatically curtail yourself when price gets above X at Y time?

[Al-Khwarizmi]

The theory was that such systems should exist, but I haven't heard of any at the moment and Google doesn't seem to find any either. And this is several years after the system was implemented.