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I know at least for Southern California Edison here in Ventura, we have tiered pricing based upon consumption - not time of day. I'm in zone 6, so my allocation for my baseline is 9.6 kWh per day.

Assuming I had a P85, and I drive 30 miles per day, I'd use up pretty much my entire allocation just for my car (85 kWh battery, ~300 mile range, so about 8.5 kWh for a 30 mile trip). My baseline is at $0.18 per kWh; my car would use all that. Then my home would pay $0.23/kWh for power. If I drove some long miles, and pushed my monthly use up pretty high, it's at $0.40/kWh.

California's tiered systems - at least for SCE - are pretty poor for electric users, especially those with electric cars.

You are on the wrong rate plan; best pricing is with a separate meter for the EV charger, for SCE it is TOU-EV-1, and puts you at $0.12-13/kWh.

If you don't want to install a second meter then you can switch from a tiered rate plan to a pure time-of-use (and have your car only charge after 10PM). $0.17/$0.23 winter/summer

SCE's tariff pages

SoCal power rates. The "first tier" is usually set well below what a normal household would use (for example, I have no AC, no pool/hot tub, all LED lighting, natural gas for heating and clothes drying, and I'm only home for 15-18 days a month - and I still use 110-120% of my typical allowance). Of course, we also get to have the highest gas prices in the lower 48 - even though we are the 3rd largest producer of oil in the US.

Peak rates for commercial users in Southern California Edison territory are $3.641/kwhr (!) at 5PM on days where the downtown LA peak temp is >=95F. Even 85-90F days are a ridiculous $0.6205/kwhr, midnight rates on those same days are $.0481 so it's not hard to see how shifting a few thousand killowatt hours per month during the summer could add up to a million over their properties.

Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.

I beg to differ. For hot, sunny climates, judging from the power companys' behavior, solar looks like an ideal match for electricity demand.

Here's a program from each of the big 3 down here.

San DIego Gas and Electric has Reduce Your Use days, which they enact when they fear the grid is under strain. On those days they will refund you back 4 times the cost of a Kw/H if you reduce vs the day before between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Pacific Gas and Electic offers Peak Demand Pricing which adds a surcharge to your regular time-of-use rate during the peak period from 2-6 p.m.

Southern California Edison has Critical Peak Pricing CPP. Events will only be activated during SCE’s summer season between noon and 6:00 p.m.

All electric companies have lower rates for electric vehicles. For example, edison allows you to set up a separate meter for electric vehicle and pay only $0.11/kWh.

According to their terriff sheet summer consumption at 200% of baseline is $0.19564 for delivery and and $0.12396 for generation which actually comes out to $0.3196 per KWhr so I assume the $.35 includes some kind of taxes.

Yeah I don't think that applies everywhere, according to SCE's rate sheet any domestic user consuming over ~900 kwh/month during the summer is paying ~$.30/kwh for those overage kwh. As far as businesses, they seem to be paying ~$.18/kwh at peak so I'm not sure how solar at $.25/khw is competitive, of course the rate sheet is way, way more complex than the tariff schedule here so I could be reading it incorrectly (I'm assuming you can get 2kv feeds for a commercial site, if only 480V is available then the much higher cost of ~$.36/kwh starts to make some solar attractive). That said my employer, a major Walmart landlord, has been working with SunEdison to install 30m ft^2 of solar on centers around the country, and they started in NJ, not CA so you don't have to have crazy environmental laws to make solar make economic sense.

Maybe the San Onofre generator?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station

http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PowerGeneration/SanOnofreNuclearGeneratingStation/Decommissioning.htm

Meanwhile my power utility, one of (if not the) largest in the nation, has been studying smart grids for at least 15 years now and still doesn't have it as an available service. Hell, they aren't even planning to have full implementation until 2030.

Meanwhile my power utility, one of (if not the) largest in the nation, has been studying smart grids for at least 15 years now and still doesn't have it as an available service. Hell, they aren't even planning to have full implementation until 2030.

However, I suppose one could implement a progressive billing scheme for residential customers where for instance as random numbers, the charge for the first kWh was $0.10 and the charge for the 1000th kWh was $50, the costs listed are for each kWh and not the cost of all 1000 kWh. The a monthly bill for a customer using 100 kWh would ideally be much less than 1/10 of a bill from a home using 1000 kWh.

This is precisely how SoCal Edison bills.. http://www.sce.com/customerservice/billing/tiered-rates/

I did a lot of tariff programming back in the day and I loved it...

Electrical demand is not the same as network demand. If your ISP is short on bandwidth, everyone just slows down. But if your power company is short on power, at worst, they have to start throwing people off of the grid, because everyone must have 110VAC 60hz power.

This reality is reflected in the pricing of electricity, especially for larger customers.

The kind of an electric bill a refinery gets, for example, shows this. In such bills, you start with the raw data obtained from power recorders - every kwh and kvarh (reactive power), is recorded at either 15 minute or hourly increments, depending on the utility. This data is rolled up to look at peak demand, and bill to date usage, broken out into buckets representing time of use, each of which has its own price. For the most part, the demand portion of the bill is roughly half, and the other half is the cumulative portion.

So, of all the actionable items in a bill that one could act on, really, instantaneous demand is the most important thing to optimize. If you jack up your demand during the day, for just one hour, by 50%, you've significantly increased your monthly bill... because the utility still has to have equipment to satisfy peak service.

The thing is, industrial customers have known this now for at least 10 years, if not longer, and there's a whole electrical services industry designed to help them avoid that maximum demand charge. Some companies making ice at night for cooling by day. Others try and have multiple shifts. Still others just put in their own local generation that kicks in when their utility usage gets too high. All of this is controlled by automated SCADA systems that have been field proven for at least a decade, if not longer.

The point is, I'm wondering how much smarter the electrical world can actually get? What you are really talking about is putting residential customers on industrial style tariffs. But, what would be the benefit? I mean, there's not too much a residential customer could practically do that would cost effectively help them lower their peak demand in such a way as to be cost effective.

For example, in California, for SCE, the GS-2 tariff specifies a demand charge of less than $10 / kw. SCE GS2. If you figure that most homes use less than 2Kw max demand, there's not much room for economical demand shaving. If you lowered your peak demand from 3kw to 2kw, you would be saving $120 a year. There's few, if any devices that could store energy at night, help with peak demand by day, where you could actually recoup that investment economically.

More on "remote disconnect":

A utility statement, from Southern California Edison: Application of Common Criteria was considered but deemed impractical to formally apply due to schedule. Much of SCE's process is borrowed from the Common Criteria. Choosing robustness levels. Graduated sense of robustness. Not requiring vendors to take to someone for certification.

In other words, no outside validation of security, and no compliance with even the minimal Common Criteria standards.

Old news. Southern California Edison has been offering the ability to do this for awhile by adding an external device on the outside compressor... http://www.sce.com/RebatesandSavings/Residential/_Heating+and+Cooling/SummerDiscountPlan/Details/default.htm

As others have noted, this is also done by other utility companies throughout the U.S. too. For instance, Austin Energy (in Texas) also offers a radio controlled thermostat program: http://www.austinenergy.com/Energy%20Efficiency/Programs/Power%20Partner/index.htm

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.

Lucky you. I live in a city (not downtown) and the longest I had was 12 hours of no power overnight. It is probably because Sunday. And I am in an area serviced by Southern CA Edison.

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

Map.

No pixelation that I see up to highers resolution.

This seems somewhat far-fetched to me.

From what I remember of physics in highschool, the production and transport of electricity is much more efficient when it is done in high volume with high voltages. In a small grid, you'd lose the benefits of that efficiency. It would also require separate maintenance crews, hardware, etc.

It would also raise concerns about standardization. Will the product I just purchased work on a grid down the street? Would you have to replace your appliances when you moved? The biggest benefit of consolitation is, imo, that you don't have to ask these questions. The systems are large enough to span areas well beyond the majority of general user's environments and thus there are few, if any compatability issues (i.e. Currently, if you leave the country, you might need to change your plug type / voltage, but anywhere in the country it should be the same).

Interruption also raises an issue. I'm inclined to think that a larger factility is easier to keep in operation because it's consolidated and more easily accessed by technicians / engineers / etc.

There are some benefits.

Solar power is made feasible, at least partially, in this case. I've always wondered why we don't all just have solar panels on our houses and batteries in the basements. I suppose that living in Southern California gives me a bit of a bias in terms of estimating the feasibility of such a system, but it certainly seems more reasonable than burning copious amounts of fossil fuels.

There are also other "alternative" power sources listed in the article, although it seems to me that large-scale, consolidated power production is still superior, given that the production facilities are clean.

Having grids separated increases security of those facilities in a disaster as there is no single facility whose compromise would cause a power loss to an entire large grid. With small grids, even if your grid goes down, surrounding grids should still be operational. That does, however, raise concerns about maintenance and repair--who's doing it and when?

Why not nuclear?

Nuclear energy is some of the cleanest and most efficient energy production available. Even with the waste being very toxic, its concentration levels are high. It is arguably easier to control the pollution from nuclear by-products than from a coal power plant. In a well-maintained and operated plant, there is virtually no risk of a meltdown, and I'm sure modern technology can be used to further increase the safety of nuclear power.

Chernobyl is the bloody poster-child of anti-nuclear groups, but that's certainly not par for the course in terms of nuclear power. San Onofre is down here in SoCal, and I dare say we have any mutated sea bass or deathclaw walking around. ;)

My vote is for nuclear, hydroelectic, and other efficient, clean, large-scale power sources, or for solar panels on my roof. It'll be interesting to see how this issue plays out.

Actually this is the holding company, sce is http://www.sce.com/. and yes i work for then too!

By my simple calculations, to replace the San Onofre Nuclear power plant near where I live, which generates over 1 gigawatt of power, would require 13.7 million cows.

There are *tons* of cows in the US. According to this report , there were 96 million cows in the US in 1992, of which about 22.6% are dairy cows.

So this could be a pretty big deal (particularly if all cows could be used and not just dairy cows) but it would involve a big fraction of the industry getting involved.

When I toured San Onofre, they mentioned that (1) in California, the power companies must buy power from independent producers at the highest rate they are paying for any power, and (2) pig farmers were selling power to them at that time, and making some pretty good money off of it. That was around 1998-99.

You would think with power costs what they are now, every little farm would be looking into this. I hope they are.

I suspect they are not - or if they are they will find the risks too great.

It would be truely bizzare if we had to genetically breed cows to make them more "gas-y". I can just see it now: dairy cows, meat cows, gas cows...

The one image which keeps popping into my mind when such topics crop up is of starving people in other nations utterly bewindered that we could use all this fertile land...to generate electricity.

Of course the US alone already wastes enough food to save all the starving peoples of the world if we chose to do so - it is just a question of distribution.

We use PDA's here for log taking and data taking in the field, with logic in the PDA to notify the us about out of spec items, bad data, immediate action requirements based on these, etc... VERY useful to us. And remote access to the uploaded data is useful to all kinds of other people (maintenance, engineering, etc) here. Ours don't use Linux though, I was only replying to the "never had the need" comment.

I live somewhat under 50 miles from a nuclear powerplant. That plant is on the seashore, approximately 2 miles from an active offshore earthquake fault. Anyone who buys a house near the plant receives a booklet about what to do in the case of release of radioactives. There is a near zone and far zone from the plant, which determines which booklet one gets.

The plant is near a Marine bombing test range.

Heat pollution is readily visible in the ocean as one drives by.

Terrorists could easily bring down the power lines from the freeway.

But yes, it's better than coal.

I know there is a fault there because I couldn't get earthquake insurance when I bought my house in 1986, because it had just had an earthquake. Yet, SCE claims there is no seismic activity in the area. RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

I remember well when there was a real, unplanned blackout in San Francisco for about 6 hours. It happened back in 1998 - it was quite a surreal experience.

I tried calling SCE but got a fast busy signal, so I gave up. Then about 20 minutes later, power blew out completely,

Once I thought to turn on my radio, I heard word that power was out all over the west coast.

My understanding is that a major power line coming from Washington got damaged. Because we in California don't have nearly enough local power capacity, scattered areas all over CA were blacked out to not overload what we do have.

Power was out about 2 hours for us in Orange. It was back before night, so I didn't even get to do any good astronomy. I heard power was out well into night elsewhere.

Contrary to what those in other sections of the world may think (what? you don't keep up with everything that happens in California? why not?), this is not exactly a new topic.

It comes down to, essentially, a truly awful economic decision and a great deal of FUD spread by (who else?) the power companies and the media.

Deregulation started in 1995, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco started studying the possibility. Other states (most notably New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania/Maryland, which forms one power region) had managed to successfully deregulate power, so California figured it was a Good Thing (TM).

The bad economics come in when you realize that it was only the wholesale market that was deregulated, but that Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were under a CPUC-imposed rate freeze, which meant they could not raise their rates.

Added to this was a requirement that Edison, at least (I'm not sure about PG&E), was forced to divest itself of its power plants. These power plants were bought up by companies that were essentially startups. The new generators of electricity raised the price of electricity, and SCE and PG&E were stuck.

It amounts to a larger version of the rent control in my hometown of Santa Monica - costs may rise but the end-users pay a fixed rate set by the government.

An interesting side note for those who care to research further - San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was under no such rate freeze, and prices, predictably, tripled this summer. SDG&E, you notice, is not facing bankruptcy, because they are free to raise their rates.

As for the environmental "cartel" whining about nuclear power, it was my last knowledge that both Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant north of San Luis Obispo and San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS, aka "the iron tits" due to their unfortunate shape) were both running (with some exceptions due to kelp in the intake at DCNPP).

The cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside, and San Bernadino (among others) are NOT affected, no matter what FUD you may see in the national media, because they have municipal utilities which have long-term contracts and were never regulated (the CPUC has no authority over municipal utilities).

You can check the status of the grid at the California Independent System Operator's website, but it may be down (slashdotted without ever being posted on slashdot, imagine!) We have had no rotating outages yet. Let's hope the broken system gets fixed soon.