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from the is-your-meter-smarter-than-a-5th-grader? dept.
Electricity companies increasingly install smart meters in order to stabilize the grid. The idea is simple: When there is high supply, the price goes down, while when there is little supply, prices go up. People therefore are more likely to wait for cheaper prices, thus the demand in low-supply times is reduced, and the demand in high-supply times is increased, resulting in a better match of supply and demand, and thus a more stable grid.
However now research at the University of Bremen shows that the smart meters may actually have the opposite effect. From the phys.org article:
"Our work examines the, at first sight, great idea to use smart electricity meters to dampen fluctuations in the electricity power nets," Stefan Bornholdt at the University of Bremen told Phys.org. "However, we find that under some conditions, consumers with such meters start competing and create a new artificial market which exhibits properties of real markets, such as bubbles and crashes. Thus, instead of dampening out fluctuations, it may create new ones. In this way, interacting smart meters may generate chaos instead of stability."
The mechanism they describe as follows:
"When laundry piles up, users (or algorithms in advanced machines) can adapt the threshold to a higher allowed price. When the fluctuating price then drops after a while from higher levels, those consumers who postponed their activity will then join the 'happy hour' of cheap electricity, leading to an avalanche of demand (reminding of some crowded bars at happy hour). This is a dynamic phenomenon which econophysics models, but not standard economic models, can represent."
The original article in Physical Review E is also freely available from arXiv.org.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 30 2015, @07:12PM
That would not be fighting back, that would be helping the power company.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:17PM
if you charge at off-peak then you pay less for the same energy. You get to keep more of your money, the electric company gets less of it. How is that "... helping the power company"
Victory over something doesn't always mean you destroy your opponent.
Victory can also mean getting what you want (spending less of your money) while denying your opponent what they want (getting more of your money).
In this case the "charge batts during off peak, use batts during peak" system would be a victory for the homeowner since it would cost them less for the same amount of electricity.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:49PM
It is helping the power company by saving it the cost to provide extra power during peak and/or to themselves store the additional power during off-peak (and eating the inevitable losses of that process yourself instead having the power company eat them). There is a reason why the company offers off-peak energy cheaper, after all.
You're probably not spending less money (because the money you save from cheaper electricity will go into the price of the storage system and the energy loss of the charge/discharge cycle), but the power company definitely will save money (if not, they miscalculated the prices).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.