Demand shaping enabled by smart meters is happening today (check out Florida Power & Lights programme) and works. Tricks like turning a water heater off for 40 minutes during the middle of a summer's day when the air con load maxes out can deliver major savings.
The real problem is that the entire energy system is demand driven: when you turn the a light there better be electrons there or we have a brown out. Want we need to do is convert the energy system to supply following: devices use power when it is available.
The trick is the feed the price from the energy markets into the home where we can run an internal energy market. Your appliances bid for the power they need and the highest bidders win. Our smart homes and the appliances themselves decide when is the best time to soak up excess energy supply. Lights will always want power, your water heater might not if it's hot, and your washing machine might be happy to wait until the power is cheap late at night.
This also nicely accommodates your own generation (solar cells, CHAP...)--give it a price and add it to your home energy market. You can even sell you excess back onto the grid, if it makes sense.
Like all increasingly scare resources, we need to use less. Technologies like desalination are only making it worse (desalination needs a lot of energy, and we need more water to make more energy). If we want a sustainable energy system then we need to be a lot smarter about how we generate and use electricity.
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Demand shaping enabled by smart meters is happening today (check out Florida Power & Lights programme) and works. Tricks like turning a water heater off for 40 minutes during the middle of a summer's day when the air con load maxes out can deliver major savings.
The real problem is that the entire energy system is demand driven: when you turn the a light there better be electrons there or we have a brown out. Want we need to do is convert the energy system to supply following: devices use power when it is available.
The trick is the feed the price from the energy markets into the home where we can run an internal energy market. Your appliances bid for the power they need and the highest bidders win. Our smart homes and the appliances themselves decide when is the best time to soak up excess energy supply. Lights will always want power, your water heater might not if it's hot, and your washing machine might be happy to wait until the power is cheap late at night.
This also nicely accommodates your own generation (solar cells, CHAP ...)--give it a price and add it to your home energy market. You can even sell you excess back onto the grid, if it makes sense.
Like all increasingly scare resources, we need to use less. Technologies like desalination are only making it worse (desalination needs a lot of energy, and we need more water to make more energy). If we want a sustainable energy system then we need to be a lot smarter about how we generate and use electricity.
A little more detail at SlideShare.
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