[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.