[FRIAM] Agents invade real-work consumer electricity market

[Robert Holmes]

Yes it could, indeed that's what the UK's National Grid have done with the
Dinorwig pumped storage hydro station: it fills the top reservoir at night
(low demand, low price) and releases it during daytime peaks (high demand
high price). Now just how much of this saving get's passed on to consumers
is another question...

However once you centralize you have to address a bunch of regulatory
issues, not least who owns the wires. If my local community bands together
and invests in one of these devices to buy cheap electricity from PNM, could
we reasonably expect to use PNM's wires from the device to our houses for
free? Or would we have to start laying and (even worse) maintaining cable?
Either way, the economics would get even more unattractive.

Robert



On 5/1/06, Rogers, Raymond <raymond-rogers at idexx.com> wrote:
>
> What I don't understand is the advantage of having one in every house.
> Couldn't the same function be centralized; if you don't  trust commercial
> entities a Grange type of centralization might do.
>
> RayR
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> *From:* Robert Holmes [mailto:rholmes62 at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, May 01, 2006 10:33 AM
> *To:* Charles Gieseler; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Agents invade real-work consumer electricity market
>
> Interesting - though I'd be surprised if their domestic model took off
> ($10k to save their 15% on you electricity bill means a long time before
> breaking even).
>
> Now what would be really exciting would be if your little eTivo was
> allowed a great deal of autonomy: rather than just choosing when to buy it
> could decide who to buy from, maybe collaborate with other eTivos in the
> neighbourhood to get a bulk discount, maybe start selling back to the power
> company. And I'm sure there'd be some really interesting dynamics if you
> programmed your eTivo to tell lies....
>
> Robert
>
> On 4/29/06, Charles Gieseler <charles_gieseler at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > A story came across slashdot last week about a device for businesses and
> > households that takes advantage of dynamic pricing to buy and store
> > electricity on behalf of the owner. It uses "a built-in computer powered by
> > a Pentium chip [that] will make intelligent purchase decisions, buying when
> > prices are low, then storing the electricity for later use."
> >
> > My favorite quote: "Think of it as a kind of TiVo for electricity."
> >
> > If such devices become prevalent, I wonder what impact we might see on
> > market patterns. Might there be rolling off-peak hours as all agents try to
> > buy at the "right time" or are the likely to reach some kind of equilibrium
> > where the price remains relatively stable? Sounds like an interesting
> > situation to model.
> >
> >
> > Here's the slashdot blurb:
> > http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/27/2117240
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Charlie
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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> >
>
>
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