Readit NewsFor example, here in Ontario Canada, we have the option of an "Ultra Low Overnight" rate where the energy price is 2.8c/kWh between 11pm and 7am, while the tiered rates start at 9.3c/kWh; given the 6.5c/kWh delta, how many days' worth of use would be needed in order to pay off a given battery system? How would adding a solar system affect that calculation?
Rate references: https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/elect...
I spent a couple of days with the software support team and was given an account on a UNICOS-running X-MP (hostname was either “forest” or “wind” - I specifically remember the second because the motd said “if you have problems with wind, please contact [redacted]” and that made my 16yo brain chuckle). Anyway, my benchmarking program was to calculate all the factorials up to 100!, and then repeat the process a lot. Fibbonacci, as given in the README, seems like more fun ;)
The key to lower prices on the grid is more flexible and localized pricing. Power suppliers don't like this because it favors cheaper sources of power that push their more expensive legacy generation out of the market. But it would create price incentives for demand and supply to align better.
A good example is the UK, which has national energy pricing and a lot of excess wind power in Scottland that is often being curtailed at the same time gas plants further south need to power up to power local demand there. End result: the Scottish pay the same high rate even though they are literally discarding energy they don't know what to do with. If they had local energy pricing, their rates would go down a lot because they have a lot of wind power most of the time.
And further south, people would either invest in local power generation (instead of far away in Scottland) or actually relocate data centers and other energy intensive businesses to where the power is cheap. As opposed to e.g. Slough.
In the wholesale market the biggest consideration is transmission capacity - if I can generate 100MW of electricity at $15/MW but the transmission line between me and the demand can only carry 20MW, and another generator can generate 100MW for $30/MW with excess transmission capacity to the demand, the price at the demand will lean heavily towards the $30/MW price.
The same model could be applied to local grids as a way to "manage" residential solar installations for example; overcapacity is penalized through pricing signals (but if you throw in batteries so you can shift the release of electricity...).
After that I realised maybe kids shouldn’t be exposed to the weird shit people thought was ok in the 80s.
It wasn't just okay in the 80s / early 90s, it comes from waaaay before then.