this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Electricity is too cheap for these uses.
Why is commercial power so cheap and residential so expensive? We could fix two problems by balancing that back.
My understanding is tha some commercial/industrial users will get a highly variable tariff. This may be cheaper much of the time, but can get ridiculously expensive at times of high demand.
The difference is that a bitcoin farmer can shut down at those expensive times, but a home user still needs to heat/cool their house, run their fridge etc, so the savings cancel out. Because of this, averaging the costs works out easier/better for most home consumers
You can get time of use billing at home with many power companies. Only makes sense if you have solar panels or storage batteries or some such.
I have real time pricing from my utility. It works out well because we charge 2 electric cars overnight for a fraction of what they would cost to charge at the standard fixed kilowatt-hour rate. My house is heated by natural gas; I don't think the savings would be there if I also was heating my house with electricity as I live in the midwest, where it gets cold as fuck for the winter.
My Volt (and I assume other EVs) has a setting to charge when power is cheaper.