Technology

I like the idea until you start talking about paying to dump power back onto the network in times of low demand.

Octopus energy in the UK https://octopus.energy/octopus-smart-tariffs/ has a variety of different "smart" tariffs on offer from raw market price (Agile) to EV specific tariffs. I've been with them for years as they're one of the few energy companies here that seem to have a clue and have been consistently cheaper than most of the competition. We do seem to have a much better energy market in the UK compared to the US, but the system is still pretty bad. (see the whole debacle about energy prices during the winter)

I was in an odd situation last year of being on a cheap fixed import rate, but a market rate for export, and I was at one point being paid £1/kwh to export our solar and paying 26p for import. You can even be paid to use energy occasionally with the market rate tariff when the cost of energy flips negative.

We've got a Powerwall too and can charge the battery at night and return it to the grid during peak hours. I don't do that at the moment as the rates aren't worth it for the tariff we're on (Flux). Instead while it's sunny we can just remain off grid and export our excess using the battery to cover the evening.

I'd love for a way to drive the powerwall charge/discharge behaviour with an API, it would let me make the powerwall charge up when energy prices were lowest in any given 24h window and discharge our surplus when grid prices were at their highest. Tesla had a plan to do this (managed by octopus) but they shut it down earlier in the year, probably due to crazy winter we just had... I'd still prefer some control over it though as I have a better idea of what our usage could be if I want to intervene.

Dyamic pricing is risky: it's all sunshine and rainbows until suddenly something happens and it's $9,000/kwh.

The hardest part you'd have is convincing anyone to take the downside risks for... what, exactly?

There's no upside for the consumer here unless 'investing in more stuff for your solar panels' is in some way a useful thing.

Dumping electricity into a hole in the ground (your pool) is pretty much the LEAST green thing you can do with it.

This sounds like the consumer should spend their own money to fix the grid's inability to cope with changes and the oncoming future, rather than put the impetus on the billionaires that already own the infrastructure but aren't willing to update it.

"When the grid has a deficit of power at the moment (maybe a power plant is struggling to throttle up to meet demand) the price goes way up."

The whole concept is definitely intriguing, but I worry that this would disproportionately create negative conditions for the poor. Rich people would hardly notice... I'm talking about people who have money falling out their pockets and suck up electricity all day and all night powering their high-end lifestyles versus people who live paycheck to paycheck. I hate to think of even MORE people having to decide between buying groceries and gas versus paying the electric bill. It could conceivably damage entire communities, unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible, lol, I'm not very smart).

It should be on the utility to handle the swings in load and generation. If it takes some time for your plant to start up, why isn't there some sort of short term storage? Dynamic pricing causes solar to have a very low return and will cause us to continue to rely on fossil fuels longer. Utilities handle swings in load normally. A great example is there's a massive peak of electric use in England during commerical breaks on the BBC. Everyone has gotten up to put the kettle on...

I understand the need for better balancing the power generation and usage and it will be even worse as the unpredictable renewable sources keep increasing.

Dynamic pricing is just one solution and I would support it when home batteries become more affordable and sustainable. Grid scale energy storage has more benefits than each home having individual batteries while the production scales up.

Another approach would be dynamic load adjustments. The concept of "packetized" energy in general is very appealing but it would need standardization and utility support.