Unfortunately, a more market driven approach to retail pricing is often very consumer-unfriendly because it means your bills will be very unpredictable.
Power prices vary dramatically during a day, and are often gamed by generators. Exposing retail customers to those swings directly is dangerous IMHO.
Having said that, there are many intermediate steps that help. For example, many power companies do partition prices by time of day, which makes a lot of sense[1].
In South Australia, ETSA is trialing "Direct load management", where they can shut off air conditioners for 30 minutes using smart meters when there is high demand, in return for much lower tariffs[2].
Comments
Unfortunately, a more market driven approach to retail pricing is often very consumer-unfriendly because it means your bills will be very unpredictable.
Power prices vary dramatically during a day, and are often gamed by generators. Exposing retail customers to those swings directly is dangerous IMHO.
Having said that, there are many intermediate steps that help. For example, many power companies do partition prices by time of day, which makes a lot of sense[1].
In South Australia, ETSA is trialing "Direct load management", where they can shut off air conditioners for 30 minutes using smart meters when there is high demand, in return for much lower tariffs[2].
[1] http://www.savepower.nsw.gov.au/Portals/0/docs/news/Media071...
[2] http://www.etsautilities.com.au/centric/our_network/demand_m...