My son has a electric vehicle. It has a feature to only charge during certain time-of-day based on the owner’s setting. His town offers a lower rate if he sets his charger to only work from 22:00 to 07:00, but he is on his honor not to change the setting.
With today’s technology, why don’t power companies offer two rates to better offload peak demand. Electric water heaters, clothes dryers, and car charging come to mind.
Fifty years ago, my water heater had such a feature, but the clock was electric. If we had a power failure, the internal clock no longer showed the correct time.
As above - it is still a common offering in many places. I can charge my EV from midnight 'till dawn at a rate one tenth of the peak rate.
The problem for the utilities isn’t offloading peak usage, rather it is getting people to use “base load” production. They like to sell as much poer as they can at peak rates. This comes about because for large traditional heat engine driven power - coal and nuclear - it is difficult to vary the power production over short time scales. They like to spin generators at a constant power delivery with furnaces or reactors delivering steady energy. Overnight it makes a lot of sense to price power so that this capacity is used.
Renewables - solar and wind - are a problem is this traditional model. On one hand their power delivery can be throttled by the second, on the other, they are unreliable - and of the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing you need to fall back to baseload generation. Batteries are expanding their reach, but a long way to go to fill the gap. Batteries go looking for the expensive times. No solar at night so nothing to offer at a cheap rate anyway.
Then you have gas turbine and diesel driven generators. They sit in the middle. More expensive overall, and smaller scale, they can ramp up and down with demand easily. So no value in offering off peak rates.
If you don’t have access to off peak power rates, it is likely because of the mix of power generation modes your supplier is using.
Jumping off of this point, my utility only offers time of use plans for people who have electric vehicles or electric heating/cooling. So those people who can make a big difference by changing their usage habits. (In reality they don’t ask for proof when you change your plan so anyone can participate)
I used to work for an electric utility (had nothing to do with the actual power stuff, though), and this is a good description of how it worked. My company had TOU rates as early as the 1970s.
Right, it depends on who is providing the power where you live. We certainly have the option of dual rates where I live. I was on the dual-rate plan until I got a notice from the power company that I would be saving money (not much money, but everything counts) if I went with fixed-rate, so I switched.
I agree that this makes no sense. The utility knows when you are drawing power. There is no way to cheat that.
The “on our honor” part is that you claim that you have an electric vehicle or heater or whatever to get the plan. They don’t check up on that or ask for proof*
A big part of the utilities’ expense is distribution. It costs a lot to keep those poles and wires repaired. They need to be heavy enough to handle the peak demand. It benefits the power company to move the demand to times when the distribution system has excess capacity.
Only if they have “new” meters. Of course, “new” in this context means that they were replaced sometime within the last several decades.
If you have the old mechanical spinny disk meters, those store absolutely no information whatsoever about when the power was used. They only record the totals. Modern digital meters store all kinds of info. Not only do they record when the power was used, but they record the actual voltage and current at your house, the power factor (how inductive the load is in your home, you aren’t charged for inductive loads but the power company still monitors it), how much power you are using at any given time, all sorts of stuff. Plus, it sends that info back to the power company down the power line, so that the power company doesn’t have to send anyone out to physically read your meter. The power company also uses your meters to keep tabs on their entire system, ensuring that the voltage remains in spec all the way down all of the lines, the power factor is corrected properly overall, and if there are any anomalies on the line they need to worry about.
Time of use billing requires the use of these “smart” meters. Most of the old spinny disk meters have been replaced by now, but I’m sure there are some that are still in use out there somewhere.
Well, there were attempts to control time of use.. When I moved into this house, just a couple of years back, it had a 1980s dual meter system with two meters; one peak rate meter where most things were connected and a lower priced off-peak meter, which was hooked up to only the heating and hot water system.
The really weird thing about the system was that, to ensure it wasn’t possible to use the off-peak system when there was high demand, use of the off-peak system was actually radio controlled by the energy company, and yes, I do mean that the energy company decided when the heating went on and off. It could be switched off by me, but if it was turned on it might not come on for hours.
I spent ages looking for the controls when I first moved in until it a nice lady from a national energy savings scheme came round and explained it. Thankfully, it was such an appalling system - especially as the radio signal was due to be switched off last year - that it helped qualify me for a scheme to get it replaced with a heat pump for free.
I recall the outrage when the utility replaced the spinny meters with the smart meters. Didn’t they spinnies require an actual person to walk through and read them? I think they allowed people to opt out, at least for a while. Similary for water and gas meters.
When they replaced my spinny disc electric meter, they also replaced a part of the gas meter. After that, the gas meter was stuck for years. I got a lot of free gas before they noticed.
I just got an email this morning that the city is beginning to offer “time of use” rates. They have a tool where you can estimate the difference in cost based on your usage. It says my average is $65/month right now, but if I switch, it should average $64/month. There’s not much else I can do to lower my electric bill other than what I already do.
I might sign up just to get a new meter (if that’s what they’ll do). Mine is so old, it’s difficult for me to read it when I need to check whether I have a water leak someplace.
I get a notification whenever my water usage is more than normal. Ordinarily it’s when the landscaper was here that day or if I have houseguests and there are a couple of showers. Once is when my friend’s idiot kids were in the front yard playing around and they didn’t turn the hose completely off.
With smart metering, a supplier can in principle offer a range of time-of-use tariffs of arbitrary complexity, from fixed price right up to pass-through of the half-hour wholesale price.
The more the customer is exposed to wholesale prices, the more efficiently the system will operate. Fixed price takes away a price signal from the end user and introduces economic inefficiency.
However, the current working assumption is that the vast majority of residential customers do not want to be exposed to wholesale price volatility, even though in theory it would give them the greatest opportunity to minimise their electricity cost by managing their usage. Almost nobody, except the biggest industrial users and the suppliers, has time and resources to track and predict half-hourly electricity prices. In this view, the supplier is adding value by buying at the fluctuating wholesale price, offering a fixed or simple tariff structure to the retail customer, and carrying or hedging the price risk as deemed appropriate.
If you’re worried about your old electric meter, I think you probably should be worried about an electron leak, not a water leak. Or did I miss a transition in there?
