[irishsultan]

It doesn't matter for you personally, but it kind of matters globally. If everyone hits that same inefficiency at the same time then there needs to be a lot of extra capacity in the electric grid that can be spun up during a small part of the year.

[iso1631]

Extra capacity and/or reduction in demand.

[dublinben]

There's already plenty of spare capacity in winter time that is necessary to support peak demand in summer time. Loads like electric heat pumps are also perfect candidates for automated management to smooth out load spikes, so there would be no "at the same time" to worry about.

https://learn.pjm.com/three-priorities/keeping-the-lights-on...

[SketchySeaBeast]

> There's already plenty of spare capacity in winter time that is necessary to support peak demand in summer time

That's not the case at all in very cold climates. Here in Alberta we get grid alerts when it gets extremely cold and that's with the vast majority of houses being heated by forced-air natural gas.

https://globalnews.ca/news/9364926/cold-weather-grid-alert-a...

[DavidPeiffer]

Those are general demand curves, and are not necessarily representative of the coolest days of the season. What we care about is the gap between supply and demand.

From experience buying large industrial quantities of natural gas, the larger market can see bad effects at low temperatures. Even in the upper Midwest you can get force majeure events, particularly when temperatures drop below 0 F for a couple days.

The winter months bring planned shutdowns for power plants to perform maintenance, trying to prevent downtime during the summer heat. The non-linear nature is a concern, though in cases almost up to the 1:1 point, it's more energy efficient to burn natural gas to create electricity and use a heat pump compared to burning natural gas in the home.