[philwelch]

We have a version of that in Texas, too. There are some commercial cryptocurrency mining operations that pay for a certain level of power capacity, and if the grid is running low on power, the grid just buys the capacity back from them and they stop mining for awhile.

If you find cryptocurrency mining objectionable for some reason, you could apply the same basic principle to things like aluminum refining or desalination.

[Dylan16807]

That's still only paying when the capacity is needed. It doesn't do a good job of incentivizing power sources/releases that are needed very rarely.