Some people in Sydney will be paid to not use electricity in peak periods
Instead of a big blackout the plan now is to have lots of little “by choice” blackouts at the appliance level. It’s smarter than crashing the grid, but ponder what we’ve swapped –once electricity was cheap and “all the time” and now after this discount it will still be more expensive but also “not there when you need it”. Let’s all cheer for progress.
Cashing in for slightly less obscene electricity bills? How low is that bar on our expectations.
Sydney households to cash in for turning off appliances
Houses and business in some high-growth Sydney suburbs will be offered payments to dial down or switch off appliances during peak demand periods under a scheme being trialled by the state’s biggest distribution network.
Ausgrid is planning the demand management trial for up to 10 suburbs across the city — including Alexandria, Redfern, Auburn, Kingsford and Waterloo — over summer in a bid to reduce the peak load on its network.
It is expected to cost around $1.5 million in payments to households and business and to involve up to 1300 households that would agree to reduce demand at peak times and if successful it could become a permanent program and help Ausgrid defer the expense of major upgrade.
The payments would be linked to a commitment to reduce demand at peak times. “If they are not switched of at the peak, that becomes a problem for us,” he said.
If CO2 mattered, and renewables were useful, there would be some point to this pain.
Tell the kids: one day when I was young, we could switch on the heaters, the pool pump and the oven whenever we felt like it.If the discount becomes large presumably the poor will do without, but maybe some of the rich will use an iphone programmable thingy’s to put their aircon on while they are at work. Thus running the air con when they didn’t need it to store up a house-of-cold for when they get home in peak hour and swtich it off? Add another inefficiency to the system…