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Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power
Wired has a timely story about putting more of the automated and non-automated decisions behind the use of electrical power into and around households. From the summary: "If the electric grid stops being just a passive supplier of juice, consumers could make choices about how and when to consume power. Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move."
A similar story is featured right now on PhysOrg, highlighting a particular pilot project involving "smart meters" in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
I guess the US electric companies always found they could get reimbursed for expensive peak load plants so they had no incentive to apply intelligence to load management.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Of course it is important to only control the right loads. Water heating is a good candidate, so might be charging electric vehicles overnight. Basically loads that need juice but not necessarily constantly.
Probably a good idea not to do this to TV sets or medical equipment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You wouldn't want to come home and find that all your Cherry Garcia has melted and your arugula has wilted because your "smart" house decided to take itself off the grid. You need to have some sort of backup power for quite a few appliances. A way to do this is to produce your own power with solar panels or wind turbines, and in fact a lot of people are already doing that (and pushing electricity back into the system as a net supplier!).
But really, the way to avoid the crunch is to make the systems we use more efficient. If we can't live without air conditioning, maybe we can take steps to make it cheaper and less energy-consuming than our current HVACs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling
Of course efficiency improvements are only a temporary band-aid. At some point consumption will overtake the gains made in efficiency. However, if we can forestall the inevitable long enough to move more of our power consumption needs to a renewable energy solution, the better off we will be and the less dependent we will be on fossil fuels.
The primary benefit from a smart grid isn't so much saving energy as limiting peak demand - but it would help in making best use of intermittent generation (e.g. renewables such as solar and wind).
It's not a matter of turning off all the electricity to your house. It's a matter of running your dishwasher and drier during off-peak hours and cutting back on the A/C during the really peak times. Right not, there are no incentives consumers to time their electricity usage, even though the cost to the utility varies wildly, and the utility is expected to provide as much power as you want. This BTW, is one of the reasons for the blackouts in California. That and the fact the companies like Enron knew this fact and exploited it.
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
In order to effectively balance sources from grid-tied power sources, such as wind and solar, the grid needs to be re-engineered. Load balancing is a part of this. Decentralized power has some enormous advantages.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
This kind of thing sounds like something that normally would happen in a 3rd world country, not the US or Canada. Are we really to the point where we have to start shutting off hot water heaters because we don't want to re-invest in the electrical infra-structure?
I'm all for more energy efficient appliances. I've got all compact fluorescents, have an automatic thermostat, and my computers power off when not in use. But not having hot water, or raising the temperature by 4 degrees? Forget about it.
AccountKiller
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The nature of power plants (turbines, etc) makes them plenty scalable, within a range of possibilities. Building more plants (or generators within plants) requires a massive new capital investment, as well as environmental compliance.
There is no type of currently-available power plant that is infinitely scalable without further capital investment--solar is limited by how much sunlight is shining, wind by how much wind is blowing, hydro by friction of water flowing through a finite pipe, nuclear by turbine and heat dissipation capacity, gas by turbine size, etc. You can't just dump more fuel into any of these systems and expect a positive response.
Nothing new here.
First consumers can already "make choices about how and when to consume power".
Second, Utility company cut-offs to high-load things like water heaters already exist. Energy suppliers in some ares pay you a small amount to have the ability to drop your water heater elements during peak usage (cooking time and high air conditioning loads).
There is nothing suggested in TFA that does not already exist.
The most immediate single change that the average consumer can impliment is CFL lightbulbs. These are so effective that some Power companies PAY for the bulbs for you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I cry foul!!
The plants were designed to be scalable, and they did plan for growth.
Then a funny thing happened. Environmental-whackos stepped up and put a stop to all new electrical generation plants for a period of around 15 years. You couldn't even expand existing plants during this period.
Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.
Hell it was probably you marching up and down with your scruffy beard and cardboard sign in college that stopped infrastructure development for all we know.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
With a tank system you can spread the heating over the night (eg. turning on each tank for an hour means that you can service perhaps 6 times as many customers with the same peak load).
Most retail suppliers get charged some multiplier of their peak load so are very keen to keep peak loads down.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do you want to save power - here's an easy solution, make devices that actually TURN OFF. Most TVs, DVD players and other electrical devices use almost as much power when they are "off" as they do when they are on. While some devices always need to be on (e.g. tivos, routers, etc...) most would work just as well if there was a way to turn them fully off.
Capacity costs money. When it goes idle for 16 out of 24 hours, it's just a dead weight. Base load plants are generally more economical than plants that can easily adjust their output, so peaks genuinely cost more to cover in any event. If they want to offer customers a discount to help them shave the peaks and avoid the outlay, I fail to see the problem.
I don't think the plans that essentially have homeowners buying on a commodities market are likely worthwhile. People already have jobs, becoming ameteur commodities traders in the off hours is a bit much to ask.
Hoever, simple things like a different rate during set peak hours can work well. Most households can delay laundry and dishwashers until the evening or early morning. Many do anyway because people are at work.
I'm not a specialist in electric power, but here in Switzerland we have what we call are "Pumpkraftwerke".
They are basically water powered generators utilizing a large storage lake - when demand is high, the water runs from the upper to the lower lake, creating electricity. When demand is low, the water is pumped from the lower to the upper lake.
They require a large difference in height between the two seas (usually in the lower hundreds), but otherwise are pretty low maintenance.
There _is_ of course some ecological impact. But they have served us well during the past years.
One problem is that the peak and average demand on the power grid are quite different. Obviously we have to build the grid to handle the peak, or we'll get blackouts/brownouts. Now what something like this could do is help reduce peak demand. Try to balance things out so that there isn't as much usage during peak times. This in turn means we don't have to spend so much money building out more electrical distribution and production.
This is already done on a large scale in the US. For example grid controllers will talk to a company about shutting down part or all of their usage at a certain time. A good candidate might be something like a food processing/storage facility. The controllers ask them to shut down their coolers at the time when homes are kicking up their usage (like around 4-7 PM). This isn't a problem for the company, they just cool it down a bit more before hand, and the temperature stays low enough.
Well a similar thing could be applied to houses as well, in theory. Shut down or reduce certain things during peak times, or zone the usage so only part of the homes in a given area are using it at once.
I'm not saying it is a cure-all or that we want it doing things like shutting down air conditioners for 3 hours in the desert or something, but there is potential to balance things out better and thus save money.
They do plan for it - and is the reason "grids" came about in the early days of electricity ... industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads, and thus much of the time, base-plants, despite often not being that scaleable, can economically cover much of the load without problem.
... it's typically only extreme cold or hot weather that leads to excessively high peak loads, though many transmission operators mitigate such extreme situations by directing industrial users to shed load and/or slight voltage reduction.
So while people use more power at night, many industrial users tend to use less, so it evens out most of the time.
The tricky time is late afternoon / early evening where peak loads can occasionally spike significantly requiring the extended use of peaking power plants, such as gas fired units to cover the shortfall at much higher expense...
However, on many grids in the U.S., most days, such peaks are not a big issue
Ron
The environmental wackos had little to do with the blackouts in California. The problem was that the state took forever in deregulating the power sector, so that no one wanted to build a power plant for five years because they knew they would be forced to sell it due to deregulation (which required each utility to own plants corresponding to 50% of power it sold).
but then again there is good investment return in peak load powerplants like pump storage powerplants, especially when coupled with a nuke powerplant.
they can be loaded using the cheapest electricity availiable and they can sell at the peak load (the most expensive electricity).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I believe the Swiss buy cheap electricity from the French at night to pump the water back up the mountain so they can use it during the day when the electricity is more expensive.
Environmental-whackos .... Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.
No. Enron, amongst other crooked energy traders, and the states that enabled them (Hello Texas!) stepped up. California wasn't counting on being screwed over by its fellow states (as in transmission lines deliberately scheduled to block power going *into* CA during peak times).
The California blackouts were caused solely by criminals doing criminal acts. There was plenty of power otherwise.
If anything, California has since realized that it needs more of its own power generation facilities to protect itself from its neighbors that would sell it down the river (more literal than you know) in no time flat.
Sure, there's plenty of ways to bank cheap off-peak electricity if you're clever about it. There's a system for commercial buildings to make ice at night in an insulated tank that's used for AC during the day.
Any technology that requires heating large quantities of water will not be instantly scalable yet can still be used for peaking (high load hours).
Gas fired electrical generation plants can respond faster than Coal fired ones, and Nuclear (contrary to your assertion) can also respond quite quickly to additional demand.
All of these require that their boilers be kept at or near steam temperature at times when peaking is likely to be necessary.
About the fastest responding technology is hydro power. Penstocks can be opened and turbines spun up in less than 5 minutes.
Current electrical generation capacity is "scaled" by replication. As a utility approaches 100% utilization during peak periods it starts planning another generation plant. These things 1 year to design, 2 years to build, and 15 years to get permission to build. By that time the design is obsolete.
The problem is one of NIMBY, pure and simple. It will take several California brownouts before the political hacks get out the the way and let the engineers do their job.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
> California has since realized that it needs more
> of its own power generation facilities to protect
> itself from its neighbors
But this is exactly what I was saying.
California had long had the practice of dis-allowing new electrical generation plants anywhere in the state by tying them up in such a morass of regulation that it was effectively impossible to build new plants there.
This was done intentionally to push the generation plants (and the associated pollution) out of their back yard into someone elses.
Why should Texas, who built and owned their own plants and transmission lines (and who, for a long time saw no need to tie into the national grid) be forced to deliver electricity to California SIMPLY so that California could avoid pollution. Texas didn't escape the pollution. They had gas and coal fired plants belching 24/7 so California could flip the switch but never see the smoke stack.
California got exactly what it deserved. Washington, Oregon, and even Montana also faced increased rates due to California refusing to improve its infrastructure.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What we need are some REAL leaders and not just spineless congress critters.What we NEED is some leaders who will say-"We NEED safe affordable power and a good modern infrastructure. So we ARE going to build new nuclear power plants where they can be the most benefit,while putting more research into both alternatives and safer nuclear power designs.We ARE going to rebuild our failing bridges and roads,and we ARE going to have a national broadband infrastructure so we can compete in modern society!" What we NEED is a leader who'll tell all the NIMBYs to take a hike and do what is best for the nation.
But,sadly,I doubt that is going to happen. Instead we'll get more wars over the ever dwindling oil reserves,more finger pointing and useless rhetoric,and we'll slowly slip farther and farther behind everyone else as we slowly turn into just another third world dictatorship. I truly hope that I'm wrong. I truly hope we'll get leaders that can look ahead and think long term instead of simply looking at the next election cycle and the enrichment of their friends and ways to ever increase their powers over us. But I haven't seen anything in a long time that would make me believe it just won't keep going the way it has for the past couple of decades. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
1st Step :
~75% of power is nuclear generated
2nd Step :
At around 11.30 pm and until 7 am (or so), you pay less for your electricity.
That means every one sets their tank based water heater to automatically use only night hours power.
(you can still switch to manual if you run out of hot water).
That way, all those heaters are off from peak hours usage.
IMHO, to prevent instabilities and peaking, system can not be left blind and non-cooperative. We should have an integrated intelligent system for power delivery:
...) on low price/priority settings and our immediate need appliances (hair dryers, computers, lights, microwave ovens, ...) on high price/priority settings.
There should be an asynchronous handshaking protocol for appliances to request exact amount of additional power from the grid and to postpone activation before the grid acknowledges that it is ready to supply it.
Furthermore, when load intensifies, in order to prevent "starvation" of new appliances waiting to be switched on, all appliances would have to be able to gradually scale down their consumption on demand from the grid.
Alternatively (/additionally), there should be "power bid" system: consumer should set the limit for the price of a watt consumer is willing to pay for given appliance (according to consumers' own priorities and preferences) and then the grid could clear the overload by raising the price (thus pushing of-grid appliances with lower priority set by their respective owners) in real time.
Obviously, we could set our low priority "batch job" appliances (dishwashers, clothes washer/dryer,
Interestingly, this system could also allow small/micro/local rapid response energy producers and merchants (buying low, selling high, provided they have efficient energy storage/retrieval systems) to compete on the "watt market" and offload the system, thus creating new opportunities, better energy supply and more accurate cost management.
For instance, we could also express the timing in monetary equivalents: you can buy immediate power from small producer or merchant now, for higher cost, or you can book lower cost watts delivered from huge power station at some later time, when they are ready to deliver some extra power. In short, if you can tell exactly how many watts you need, for how long and you can afford to wait some time to get it, you could get yourself significantly lower cost.
Exactly. I live in Texas, and if you don't want to pay through the teeth for polluting our land for your cheap electricity then eat blackouts.
Stop building power plants, then regulate how much suppliers in your state can charge the people. What could go wrong?
Did Enron screw California over? Yep, don't like it? Fix your goofy ass laws, and build some infrastructure. It's the same exact thing that's happening right now in the oil market. In the U.S. we stopped building any infrastructure in refining or producing, now idiots are crying that someone else controls the price of their fuel.
Actually, the scalability is the problem right now. If you are a muni, then sure, you can get the meters and the corresponding backhaul for one city from one vendor. The scalability issue comes in when a bigger utility like SCE or PG&E need 1M-5M of these meters to create a homogenous environment. None of the vendors, even the big ones like Itron, can produce that many yet. So we wait while the vendors ramp up production. Meanwhile all of the mid-sized US utilities are starting their AMI projects, and Europe is ramping up with these things too straining the supply as well.
Population density also matters. Again, if you want a homogenous environment, and you cover a rural area, it is going to cost you.
If you are curious, here is a Google Map thingy someone developed to track all of the Smart Metering project going on out there.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
Modern Hydro (and Pumped-Storage) plants can actually respond within a minute.
In areas where it's geographically practical, Pumped Storage is also a fantastic way of dealing with the peak/off-peak usage problem, and could also potentially be used to provide "solar power at night," albeit at great expense.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
And once running, 200MW turbine can change its production for 5MW (2.5%) in just 4 seconds! Probably even faster, but that was a limit that we had to obey when we were controlling power system frequency in Serbia.
No sig today.
I've got mod points, but it's better to reply in my capacity as a controls engineer working in sustainable energies, then just mod you down.
As debatable as it is whether CA utilities did or did not build for excess capacity, it is quite frankly irrelevant. The kind of excess capacity that they would have planned for would have not been what we needed then, and especially what we need now.
We need measures to reduce energy consumption and measures to better use what we've got. Thermodynamically, a big plant isn't anywhere near as efficient running a small load, than a small plant running a small load. Ideally, we'd be able to generate 95% (I made that number up out of thin air. 100% is of course ideal, but obviously not attainable) of our energy with base-load plants and only occasionally spin up small gas turbines for the peak loads. While smart grids do nothing for the former (unless people just become more aware of the cost and thus reduce usage) they certainly do help with the latter. A washing machine run at 3AM, for all intents and purposes, is ready in the same amount of time as one that was started just before bedtime.
A good place to look is island grids. Many islands literally do not have a second source of power, so they have to specify their one plant to handle both base and peak load. This is increases capital costs and reduces efficiency at base load, increasing recurring costs. And they can't even sell excess capacity, so the island utility is really pushed up against a wall. Unless... unless you do something to spread out the load. Because, let's face it, an island grid is actually pretty nice from a simplicity standpoint because there are a lot less unknowns. No trains, little industry, just a lot of washing machines and air conditioners.
So, in short, placing the blame on someone else is not the answer. Conservation is not a virtue, and global warming and energy shortages don't stop at our borders. Smart grids are coming and are in fact a very good solution to many of our capacity problems. While they don't help save power use, they do make the usage more efficient.
P.S. As an aside, it's unfortunate that the last, least important step-- time optimization--, is being done first. If people would just put that damned ADSL modem on a timer (mine uses as much energy in a day as my refrigerator), unplug chargers they're not using, and put the computer in hibernate mode at night, that would do far more than time-optimized smart energy.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
"many industrial users tend to use less"
Trust me on this. I am an IT provider to nearly 100 industrial sites as part of my commercial client base. NONE of them shut down their systems at night, NOT ONE. They may let a bunch of employees go home, and many don't run 3rd shifts, but most of the equipment stays on, even the lights in most cases.
It's a very rare industrial site that has not learned that the time and energy and logistics of stopping production and starting it again, with product left on the line partially assembled, is not only counter productive, but in many cases simply costs more.
It's easier to use fewer people, or slow the line down slightly, and run 24/7, than it is to stop/start daily.
Commerical (most of them), sure, they turn out the ligths at night, but not industial.
Unfortunately, it's not "at night" that's the issue anyway. It's the few hours at the peak of the morning, and at sunset that are the worst, especially in summer when AC runs on electricity only, where in the winter much heat is from other sources (coal, gas, oil, wood, etc).
AC units kick on and off frequently, every 15-45 minutes depending on the home, climate, and time of day. During the peak heat of the day, everyone is running one, businesses and homes alike. Although it "saves electricity" (assuming your house is well insulated) to use a timer based AC system (wamer when noone is home, cooler when thay are, automatically) the real truth is that now we not only have to deal millions of units turning on and off, but nearly ALL of them turn on about 4:15-4:30, and run continuously while they cool the house down to it's comfort temp from it's all-day noone-is-home temp. This is a MASSIVE load on the system.
By adding some inteligence to the grid, we can stagger the times AC units come on and off. By allowing some tollerances, and some minor schedule adjustments, we can 1) prevent every AC unit from running at the same time, 2) cool your house earlier one day, and later another, balancing your electric use with others, 3) keep your house withing 3 degrees of your target at all times, 4) charge you more for unaceptable "comfort" levels (if you like it colder in your house than 78 degrees in the summer, no problem, we'll just charge you more), 5) we can avoid a lot of "surge" use, avoiding lots of expensive supplement power, and lower to overall cost WITHOUT building more power plants.
We do need more power plants. As people bring home plug-in hybrids or full electric cars, we'll have to account for this. We can't have half of california plug their car in at 5:45PM and expect all of them to start charging at once...
The good news is (most) electronics are getting more efficient. As we switch light bulbs, get more inteligent and more efficient ACs, fridges, and other appliances, use lower power PCs and TVs, and start doing other things like eliminating "sleep creap" from devices, throwing out plug-in scent warmers, etc, we can offset a bunch of it, but not even close to all. I can only hope that all of our NEW power will come anything but fossil fuel.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
One of my personal pet peaves is those damed plug-in scent warmers.
;D
I had a few, and when going through my previous home a few years back (it was INCREDIBLY poortly insulated, and I did everything I could to save power and avoid $350 bills), i took a serious look at what those things were costing me.
On average, they only burn about 4 watts each. I had 4 of those for 18 total watts (a few diferent types that used different power loads), and one candle plate (thing you set jar candles on to melt, used 17 watts).
Over 30 watts, running 24/7/365 (and often with dried up cartidges we'd forget to replace). You know what? Not only did it waste a lot of power, they damned things actually don't smell as good, or last as long, as some scented oil in a diffuser (spherical bowl with some wooden wicks stuck in it). I have 4 of these in my house now. You can pick up a good diffuser at a nature shop, world market store, or other places, or make one yourself by hitting a craft shop. The oil itself is cheap in bulk, and I cut it 3:1 with perfume base (aka rubbing alcohol). It's about $5 worth of oil to fill one, but I only do that about 3 times a year... Same cost in plug-ins for that room? $4 every 45 days... more than twice the cost not counting the electricity saved!
warning: If you have small childred or michevous cats, you may want to 1) place your oil difuser out of reach/access or 2) use strong double sided tape and affic it permanantly in place (if you have a spot you can do that to). I have 2 of mine in wall mount sconces, one above the fridge, and 1 in my bedroom on top of the gentlemans chest (about 5 feet off the floor). Getting spilled oil out of a carpet, furniture, or other surface is not something I plan to ever have to do.... (again)
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Woah woah woah.. Who decided that 78 degrees is the target here and that less than that is "unacceptable?"
Humans are most comfortable at a "room temperature" of 72 degrees, on average. At 78, you're going to have nearly one standard deviation of people that are actually sweating (and not necessarily just the fatties, either). I think we can all agree that office stench is also important to keep down.
The problem is manifold, as like I often say, "You can always put on another sweater. You can't take off more clothes than all of 'em."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Some CFL bulbs are encased in plastic, meaning you can drop them on the floor and they probably don't break. If they do break, the plastic will contain the mess. I don't think it's airtight but it is a big help.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Really? I find that very hard to believe. On average, the fridge is using about 1 kwh/day.
Energy Star
It's always on and always drawing some power even if the compressor isn't cooling. The DSL modem is drawing more power per day? How much? I just really find that hard to believe.
Actually, 74 "room tempurature" is considdered cool to most people, including my wife. 76 is a comfortable setting for most people. The standard settings that the EPA and your power company recomend it to keep the tempurature at 78 or higher in the summer and 68 or below in the Winter.
Actually, in the summer, you should wake at 78 degrees, it should rise to 85 when you're not home, return to 78 in the evening, and rise slightly to 82 at night. In the winter, you should wake at 70, it should drop to 62 when noone is home in the daytime, return to 70 in the evening, and settle at 66 when sleeping. A tolerance of +/- 2 degrees is permitted in the thermostat (if set to 78, it will rise to 80 before cooling to 76, then slowly rise back to 80, etc...)
This is the Energy Start setting you need to comply with in order to receive EnergyStar certification fro your home, and the accompanying discount on your power bill.. When you signed up for EnergyStar discounts, you AGREED to these settings. Failure to maintain them, should your power company be aware, could leave you lible to repay any back discounts you recieved. I've never heard of this, but EPA certified programable thermostats all use this default setting (and some can not be overridden if they're monitored by your power company, something Califiornia is about to pass into law).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I forgot the EPA link:'
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/product_specs/program_reqs/thermostats_prog_req.pdf
sorry
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Actually, scientists have been looking at creating VAST underwater resivoirs, combined with surface resivoirs, in a cyclic pumping solution. The idea is that water exists in it's natural state underground. During the day, when solar is being generated faster than it can be used, we pump water to the surface, or simply a higher level resivoir. At night, we let it flow back to it's subteranian home, and generate power. Since the flow of water from surface to underground can be tightly controlled, we can produce variable power at will, and "store" wind and solar energy.
The resivoirs are manmade, in mostly non-pourous rock, that are coated with a sealant. The underground portion would be hundreds of feet underground. The surface resivoir would fill and drain like a tide (and "sureface" doesn't necesarily mean open to air, it could just be one higher up in the rock bed)
Since the water is contantly cycled, it can also be easily filtered, so contamination is not an issue. As a bonus, in some places these can be built where rain runoff normally goes, and we can turn it into a great big water purification plant, and any water arriving by steam or river generates electricity. We don't need to dam it off, just funnel it into a hole in the ground, so there's no mass change to the environment (no new lakes 6 miles across to deal with). If we start by pumping seawater to the location, and fill the system from scratch, we also don't have to cannibalize existing ecosystems to get the water, and desalination and filtering would render it drinkable for future uses.
With all that water, we could build the nuclear plant down there, 500 feet underground, where it's safe from terorists, airplanes, and leaks.
Sure, it's gonna cost A LOT, but water power systems have VERY long lifespans, as do solar and wind generators. We'll need to replace the filters regularly, and the pumps occasionally, but a modular infrastructure would be part of the plan.
It's quite nearly sci-fi, but also quite possible.
Expanding the system for additional power generation is as simple as building another resivoir below the 2, giving another chamber to flood water into. We'd just need more solar and wind to pump it back to the surface.
Instant poewr, at instant notice, over superconducting lines to regional power grids anywhere in the USA we need it.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I worked on load shedding projects 25 years ago that had tens of thousands of units installed and covered large fractions of some states. It used radio pager technology and temporarily shut down selected groups of units, each had an item, such as the air conditioner, hot water heater, irrigation pump, that would be shut down for about 15 minutes when commanded by the computer in the office. Different groups would be shut down each time to spread the inconvenience. Participation wasn't exactly optional.
Near as I can tell, the advent of the smart meter, an idea back then whose time had not yet come due to the cost and reliability of the technology involved, has brought about schemes to exploit the lack of reliability of people in order to extract more profits from them. Other than that, it would seem this whole thing is just another rehash of an idea already in successful operation over two decades ago and not limited by having people voluntarily doing something.