There was a day here couple years ago when the grid accidentally bought more energy than needed so people would be actually paid to use electricity
Couple years ago? Where do you live? In Germany we had that happen last month and multiple times per year at least.
People were optimizing for this here in Sweden, then a “peak effect charge” was introduced, where you’re charged extra monthly based on the average of the three hours of largest effect usage. This is dialed in to be approximately 25% of the monthly bill at normal usage (and can go much higher).
Pro tip: if your kitchen is electric, you can also put the water to boil at night to use that free electricity and then freeze it so you have the water for your pasta ready and free anytime!
It’s Te-a-tim-e
Pratchett joke…
Outdated: due to renewables, electricity is free when the sun is shining.
Or at night when the wind is blowing while there are fewer energy sinks?
Both…Both is true these days.
…just load them when you go to bed and unload when you wake up?
Real
The first 3 are me, the 4th I haven’t done (yet)
I’m thinking of battery storage to avoid that!
Yes batteries are getting real cheap now, they are less than half the price they were when we bought our system 2½ years ago.
With sodium battery production scaling up, those will probably be both even cheaper more durable and safer.
So a couple of years down the road, the value of buying batteries will probably be insane.A battery is energy per volume.
So instead of buying a big battery, we have a small one and all the devices go along with it. The house and water is heated when the battery is charging. And the setpoint is lowered when energy is expensive.
This extends our our “battery capacity” without the investment into more electrical batteries
