[nostrademons]

With continued solar adoption, "off-peak" will shift from "overnight" to "midday", at least if the utilities are properly passing along their costs. I think it might already have in California - I saw someone in r/electricvehicles saying that they get a cheaper rate for daytime charging. The idea that overnight has the cheapest electricity rates is an artifact of the fossil-fuel-dominated electric grid economics, and (physically speaking) there's no reason for it to hold true with renewables.

[wyatt_dolores]

Yeah this. Several countries in Europe have seen negative electricity prices during the day this past spring and summer because of abundant solar and wind production: Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Portugal to name just a few.

If you had a variable electric contract (rare but possible), you were paid to use electricity during those hours. Got a battery at home? You can be paid to charge it during the day, and paid again to discharge it at night.

[buu700]

The idea of a decentralized storage grid sounds really cool. Instead of only relying on large centralized batteries, power companies would effectively rent capacity from their customers.

Imagine software that could run on EVs, Powerwall-type batteries, computers/tablets/smartphones, and so on, which would automatically charge and discharge for passive income. Essentially algorithmic trading, but with power instead of stock. You'd just have to configure any necessary time ranges and charge percentages, e.g. maybe your EV needs to be at 25% by 8am and again by 5pm on weekdays in order to make your daily commute.

Maybe some EVs will start to come with built-in crypto miners to burn negatively priced power when the battery is at capacity. Maybe Lyft/Uber and Waymo/Cruise will take advantage of it by increasing and lowering rates based on the price of power (if they don't already).

[wyatt_dolores]

Tesla has implemented a virtual power plant in California using people's Tesla PowerWall batteries: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/virtual-power-plant/pge

[nicoburns]

I think we’re likely a few years away from a tipping point beyond which adoption of powerwall style home batteries takes off in a big way. Assuming that dynamically priced electricity becomes more common, which seems inevitable.

[ThatPlayer]

My plan (in California) already has a super-off-peak from 8am to 4pm. Those do tend to be hours people aren't home though.

[ojbyrne]

In San Jose for me (as of last year) off-peak was midnight - 3pm.