Nils Holland wrote:

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:17:22 -0500, Tony
wrote:

The special rates for peak and off peak times is nothing new in the US.
It's been available everywhere I have been for 30 or more years. An
old boss of mine had a heating system based on off peak rates. In his
basement were two... I'll guess about 12' round by 5' tall tanks that
held either water or some type of anti freeze with a heat exchanger.
During off peak times the electric heated these giant tanks and the
house. During peak times the house was heated from the heat stored in
the tanks. It was great during the fall and spring, but nowhere good
enough for mid winter. They would run out of heat and then had to heat
the house on the special peak rate electric. I think he had it
disconnected and changed the electric service to a flat rate plan.

Right, special off-peak rates have been available here in Germany for
ages too. I used such a plan in my previous flat as well, where a
storage heater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater) was
"charged" with heat during the night, which it was supposed to pass on
to the air in the room during the day. Such storage heaters are
switched on, via the power grid, remotely by the utility company.
Generally, they guarantee that they willdeliver a certain number of
off-peak power hours per night, but don't tell exactly when the
off-peak power kicks in, so they have more freedom with their load
situation. I remember that slight "click" sound at different times,
when the storage heater was remotely turned on.

Nothing bad about that actually, as it allowed for the utility
companies to get rid of their excess capacities at night, and for the
owner of a storage heater to get (relatively) cheap electronic heat.
What would be possible under the umbrella term of "smart grid" goes so
much further than this, however, that I'm not sure if I'd really like
to see things go that extra mile. What we could see now are really
constantly changing, unpredictable prices - just like gas prices. Not
completely impossible (though requiring more new technology than just
a smart meter) would even be scenarios where more money gets charged
for certain kinds of devices. Probably I'm just being a bit
pessimistic here, but if it can be done (and if someone can make more
money with it), it probably will be done.

Let me add that Germany originally decided to shut down all of its
nuclear power plants by 2021 - without having a definitive answer
where our electricity is supposed to come from then. Our new
government (in office since the end of October) revised this decision
a little bit and plans to keep at least some of the nuclear power
plants in service for longer, but there are still no plans to build
new ones, even though they would actually be safer and more efficient.
Well, well...

Greetings,
Nils

All of this leads back to the fact that we do not have any good storage
technology for electricity. If we had good batteries, electric vehicles
would be practical, not just a toy for people who have money to waste
and little distance to travel, and we would have the ability to have
home power systems that could charge at an even rate and provide for our
peak power use locally giving a steady load to the grid.