> One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat rate all the time.
One of the problems with real-time energy pricing is: poor people don’t have the cash on hand to replace their furnaces or upgrade their insulation- or worse yet rent and can’t improve energy efficiency at all.
It’s difficult to raise prices enough to make it economically rational for middle class types to get batteries and heat pumps without reducing the poor to poverty.
Yep, or worse the real-time energy pricing causes the highest prices during weather crises introducing ethical issues, such as during the 2021 Texas Winter Storm on customers using real-time energy pricing plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis#Power_...
Sometimes consumer smart grid gets evangelized as 'the fourth industrial revolution' - Dr. Simon Michaux argues the material blindness of it in such a way that only the rich may experience it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pt3ioQuNc&t=625s ( Dr. Simon Michaux: “Minerals and Materials Blindness” | The Great Simplification #19 with Nate Hagens ).
You could just cap the max price and let the grid make it up during other times. That's basically what time of day billing does anyway: a blended approach to electricity rates that averages out but provides some incentive.
Of course, my jurisdiction rolled out time-of-day billing and found that demand shifted only a few percent, so I wonder if the program even covered its costs for smaller users.
And the funded programs which offer rebates for upgrades are a pain to navigate, even if you know they exist. Even if you overcome the awareness, procedures, etc. hurdles, the financial relief (rebate) is often too delayed to affect decision making when struggling financially.
One of the problems with real-time energy pricing is: poor people don’t have the cash on hand to replace their furnaces or upgrade their insulation- or worse yet rent and can’t improve energy efficiency at all.
It’s difficult to raise prices enough to make it economically rational for middle class types to get batteries and heat pumps without reducing the poor to poverty.