Do you have "peak demand" electricity pricing?

[KYErik]

Good points:

If peak pricing does happen, it seems like a strategy for summer would be to run the AC early in the morning to get the house down to 60 degrees or so and then turn it off during the peak hours.

Maybe the opposite for winter for those with heat pumps- heat that house to 80 during off peak and then turn the heat pump off during peak hours.

I am a very light sleeper, so I think the dishwasher/clothes washer starting up at 2am wouldn't work very well for me.

 

[Tig]

Coming soon to my area, which is south of Ottawa. We got a fancy new meter last year but they have not implemented the pricing yet.

 

[Ductape]

Call me crazy, but isn't forcing everyone to run dryers, a/c, dishwashers, etc @ night going to increase demand at night...... causing the price to go up?? With no reduction on cost during the day?

 

[jdbower]

You're crazy!

The premise is that things that can be moved (laundry, vacuuming, etc.) will be moved to low usage hours. However quite a few things can't/won't be moved like climate control. Ultimately this may mean some tweaking of the definition of "peak" but I think you'll still see cycles and this will help to smooth them out. More importantly, it's causing a few people to think about energy usage and may mean a few more light switches get flipped off when not needed.

Amusingly this is identical to issues I run into with telecom. You have to design a network for peak usage, but the average usage is much slower. Like building a 4 lane highway through a small town so you never run into traffic. Smoothing out the peaks by doing things like moving off-site backups to early in the morning can save a bundle.

 

[Tom_H]

We pay one rate for the first 1800 or so kwh, it goes to a higher rate after that.

We used to be on a peak/off rate plan tied to the heat/ac/hot H20 unit we had. It was a heat pump hooked up to an 80 gal tank and another 120 gal tank. In summer, it would run at night and turn 90% of that 120 gal tank into ice. The waste heat went into the 80 gal tank for domestic hot H2O. During the day, cold water from the big tank was run to a heat exchange air handler to provide the ac.

In winter, the heat pump made only hot water for both tanks, the big one for hot air and the 80 gal for domestic hot H2O.

The heat pump would run all night at the lower rate. The heat pump was locked out at peak hours which were M-F, 7-10 am and 5-8 pm in winter, and 4-10 pm in summer, the times when the demand was greatest. All other hours of the week were lower rate. The air handler and fluid circulating pumps could run at any time. Initially, the utility gave a $6k rebate on the $14k cost. It saved $ on elec., but the electronics were endlessly needing to be reset/repaired. Early on, the installer was able to reset the electronics remotely via modem, but they quit that after 5 yrs. This thing was made locally and a few thousand were sold over about an 8 yr. period. Then they stopped. All in all, everything was a wash for us $wise, but it did allow the utility to produce less total energy. It went kaput at 12 y.o in 2006.

Coal plants can run continuously, but aren't fired up and down very quickly. Oil plants and hydro can be turned on and off quickly so they are the things that are added as needed during the day. Schools, stores, even houses power down at night, so there will never be as much demand at night as during the day, even with things like the unit I used to have and with dishwashers and clothes washers & dryers that are preset to come on and run in the middle of the night.

I think that 20 years from now, new construction buildings will have all south facing roof surfaces covered with these new photovoltaic shingles. Their prices keep dropping while fossil fuel prices keep going up. I think 4th gen. nuclear will be accepted within 10 years too. It is far safer than previous reactor types.

 

[KYErik]

The "secret" is now out in the media- I just heard a news story about it on the radio today. TVA is calling it "time of day" pricing and its designed to reduce consumption. I didn't catch an implementation date though.

 

[Luremaker]

Coming soon to my area, which is south of Ottawa. We got a fancy new meter last year but they have not implemented the pricing yet.

Tig, take a look in your most recent hydro bill. Mine had a brochure on how they plan on charging us more for electicty starting some time in the fall. It lists rates of 3.2 cents (off peak), 7.2 cents (Mid Peak) and 9.2 cents (peak). The hours for each "peak" will change with the season. Of course they forgot to mention all of the other charges such as delivery (100%), line loss (10%), debt retirement etc. that we pay each month but I assume they will still be based on the peak rates. Either way we will be paying more in the fall.

The "secret" is now out in the media- I just heard a news story about it on the radio today. TVA is calling it "time of day" pricing and its designed to reduce consumption. I didn't catch an implementation date though.

Here in Ontario, the land of Canada's most expensive electricity they are calling it TOU or Time of Use pricing. TOU pricing will begin kick in sometime this fall depending on where you live in the province.

 

[heehaw]

way back when?? the power company would install off peak meters on homes with electric water heaters: this is a separate meter from the normal one on the house, an can be set to come on only during certain times: then they stopped doing that: i had several relatives that worked for the power co. back then, and have a couple of the old off peak meters: i have used them to hook up to things for people to log how many kwh they use over a period of time: like dryers, or water heater etc etc: so people could figure out what the biggest electricity user was. then for years the power co would install a device on your compressor, so it wouldn't come on during peak usage, and they gave us a little rebate for using that device: then they stopped that: it sounds like they are kinda going back to the old ways again..
heehaw

 

[caver]

I work for a large REA coop utility and the power market has become more volatile during peak demand. We've had to build several small natural gas peaking plants to meet peak demand. Our CEO at the last big company powwow hinted at looking into incentives to encourage energy conservation vs having to build another large coal plant for increasing base load,,, at about a billion dollars+.