In the late 1980s and early 90s when I was in my late teens and early 20s I worked at Home Power Magazine. Our offices and living quarters comprised a 200 square foot plywood building in the mountains just north of the Oregon-California border about 20 miles east of I-5. The nearest power line was 10 miles away, and we were completely off the grid, powered by solar panels and a wind turbine occasionally supplemented by a gasoline generator.
Living and working at the magazine, by necessity we used electricity in step with what nature provided. When it was sunny or windy out we'd do laundry, and had excess power which we'd use to vacuum the floors. When it was cloudy and calm we would minimize waste to preserve precious charge in the batteries. When the battery voltage got really low, we'd have to go out and fire up the smelly gasoline generator. Living this way I'd estimate that about 90% of our electricity came from very intermittent renewable energy.
This is remarkably different than the standard American practice in which one turns on an appliance or light with no regard to where the electricity comes from and how abundant it is at the moment.
As a result of our collective "we want it when we want it without any thought to what's available" behavior, utilities by and large say that intermittent renewable energy becomes a significant problem when it exceeds a few percent of average load. At very low levels, intermittent renewables are fairly easily accommodated by decreasing a bit the output from peaking plants (gas turbines) and some hydropower plants. Higher than that, it becomes more expensive -- the rapid cycling of gas creates premature wear and tear; operating steam turbines at low power output lowers efficiency significantly, and so forth.
But what if we (or our appliances) could respond in real time to relative abundance or scarcity of electricity supply? When the wind is blowing strongly in the Columbia gorge, we would be in the habit of doing that load of laundry and our water heaters would automatically crank up a few degrees higher temperature. When it's a calm, cloudy day our water heater would be ever so slightly cooler and we'd hold off on doing the laundry
I don't know how much, but I'm convinced that an unprecedented and aggressive demand side-management approach like this could go a long way towards accommodating a lot more renewables... adding a bit of intelligent storage into the mix will make this strategy even more effective.
To the user, electricity is there if you need it. But we're encouraged -- and our appliances are encouraged -- for non-urgent tasks to use electricity when it's abundant and less when it's not.
This evolution from an "energy miner" to an "energy farmer" regime means that when the sun is shining brightly on solar farms of cheap solar panels, and the wind is blowing strongly our appliances have a way to know this and respond to absorb the surplus.
This is, of course, not a new idea. Already some industrial customers participate in curtailable load tariffs where they agree to be shut off several hours a year in return for significant savings. And some utilities run 'dispatchable load' programs where they might install a device on your electric water heater that turns down the thermostat slightly a few hours a year.
This difference in what I'm suggesting is to design a system where these signals aren't being sent and responded to just a few hours a year, but constantly. I suggest that our power system -- like many complex social/technical systems -- can, if built with flexibility in mind -- self-organize to a hither-to unappreciated level -- through small incentive signals.
I imagine an iPad like device on the front of my refrigerator. Or maybe my watch. It shows an artistic graphic of bright sun and strong blowing wind the Columbia and I know, at that moment, it's a good time to take that bath I've been waiting for, which will feel especially good knowing that the electrons that heated that water came from a renewable source. The same signals are being sent to my water heater, my heat pump.
Has anyone imagined the implications (on climate, on power system stability, and on human behavioral) of a power system designed like this?
Living and working at the magazine, by necessity we used electricity in step with what nature provided. When it was sunny or windy out we'd do laundry, and had excess power which we'd use to vacuum the floors. When it was cloudy and calm we would minimize waste to preserve precious charge in the batteries. When the battery voltage got really low, we'd have to go out and fire up the smelly gasoline generator. Living this way I'd estimate that about 90% of our electricity came from very intermittent renewable energy.
This is remarkably different than the standard American practice in which one turns on an appliance or light with no regard to where the electricity comes from and how abundant it is at the moment.
As a result of our collective "we want it when we want it without any thought to what's available" behavior, utilities by and large say that intermittent renewable energy becomes a significant problem when it exceeds a few percent of average load. At very low levels, intermittent renewables are fairly easily accommodated by decreasing a bit the output from peaking plants (gas turbines) and some hydropower plants. Higher than that, it becomes more expensive -- the rapid cycling of gas creates premature wear and tear; operating steam turbines at low power output lowers efficiency significantly, and so forth.
But what if we (or our appliances) could respond in real time to relative abundance or scarcity of electricity supply? When the wind is blowing strongly in the Columbia gorge, we would be in the habit of doing that load of laundry and our water heaters would automatically crank up a few degrees higher temperature. When it's a calm, cloudy day our water heater would be ever so slightly cooler and we'd hold off on doing the laundry
I don't know how much, but I'm convinced that an unprecedented and aggressive demand side-management approach like this could go a long way towards accommodating a lot more renewables... adding a bit of intelligent storage into the mix will make this strategy even more effective.
To the user, electricity is there if you need it. But we're encouraged -- and our appliances are encouraged -- for non-urgent tasks to use electricity when it's abundant and less when it's not.
This evolution from an "energy miner" to an "energy farmer" regime means that when the sun is shining brightly on solar farms of cheap solar panels, and the wind is blowing strongly our appliances have a way to know this and respond to absorb the surplus.
This is, of course, not a new idea. Already some industrial customers participate in curtailable load tariffs where they agree to be shut off several hours a year in return for significant savings. And some utilities run 'dispatchable load' programs where they might install a device on your electric water heater that turns down the thermostat slightly a few hours a year.
This difference in what I'm suggesting is to design a system where these signals aren't being sent and responded to just a few hours a year, but constantly. I suggest that our power system -- like many complex social/technical systems -- can, if built with flexibility in mind -- self-organize to a hither-to unappreciated level -- through small incentive signals.
I imagine an iPad like device on the front of my refrigerator. Or maybe my watch. It shows an artistic graphic of bright sun and strong blowing wind the Columbia and I know, at that moment, it's a good time to take that bath I've been waiting for, which will feel especially good knowing that the electrons that heated that water came from a renewable source. The same signals are being sent to my water heater, my heat pump.
Has anyone imagined the implications (on climate, on power system stability, and on human behavioral) of a power system designed like this?
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