Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Here's another.

What Hacker News said

Recommends eru · 2021-10 · on “The booming business of knitting together the world’s electricity grids”

Technology Connections has an interesting video about pre-cooling: [this video] The author also made a good point that despite wind and solar being intermittent, they are actually fairly predictable a or less day in advance (thanks to weather forecasts).

Cites Nzen · 2021-07 · on “The Colorado River is shrinking”

While the effect of residents is small, the usage of other sectors is, ultimately, in service of residents. People raise cattle in response to or anticipation of demand. Those cattle use more water than if we raised chickens or wheat for seitan. I consider it unlikely that a top down campaign to ration beef, in service of water usage, would succeed without a change in residential culture. I am more apt to agree with Hank Green [0] that success in major social restructuring requires involvement at the individual level, too, because this encourages secondary behaviors that reinforce the restructuring. People who are voluntarily quitting hamburgers and steaks are more apt to write to their repr

Cites GuB-42 · 2021-12 · on “Why battery costs have plunged since 2010”

Yes, I think it is a missed opportunity. Hopefully, we are slowly getting there. We have smart meters, smart thermostats, smart everything, all these devices should be able to negotiate for the best time to run. The big red display can be a thing, but I don't want to micromanage my power consumption when it can be done automatically. We already have boilers that turn off during peak hours, but you can also have your thermostats take the cost of electricity into account, there is a video by Technology Connections on that ( [this video] ). You should also have a "run when it is cheap" button on your appliances, most already have a delayed start feature, we can be a little smarter. Electric cars are

Cites evanreichard · 2022-07 · on “Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids”

Ecobee has eco+ which has "Community Energy Savings" [0]. It was just way too intrusive. It seemed to be a reactive system vs proactive. Technology Connections goes into this more [1], but I believe they should be providing a system that proactively cools when there is less demand _prior_ to an expected increase in demand. Effectively using your house as a "battery". When I had it enabled, I was _always_ too hot (in the summer) during peak hours. Sorry, not sorry: I'm not willing to sacrifice my comfort for the ~$10/mo incentive. ___ [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]

Cites ReactiveJelly · 2022-08 · on “Tesla Virtual Power Plant”

Technology Connections does a similar thing, over-cooling his house at night as a thermal battery. Video: [this video] Reddit discussion: [LINK] He estimates it at 16 KWh of storage. Same ballpark as a Powerwall, right?

Cites nixonpjoshua1 · 2023-03 · on “Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners”

That really isn't the same product, as I understand this is an HRV combined with heat pump system where they are software integrated to PID controls that optimize the level of fresh air and weather aware energy utilization, with a system like this and a startup I'm sure optimizations like this [this video] should be possible - this is like Dropbox, can't expect people to roll their own - and you need a fully integrated system to really make this work well without comfort, even simpler if cooling/heating is more efficient via bringing in fresh air this system could choose to do that vs running the heat pump at all!