Time dependent and location dependent electric pricing using smart meters
Smart meters are increasingly deployed to electric endusers, with the prime goal of decreasing metering costs for the power companies.They can be set in a way that the momentary power usage is transmitted close to realtime.
The trading price of electric energy fluctuates with time, e.g. due to the volatile production of renewables, and demand curves of the net. For sunny and windy days, the price can even become negative http://www.epexspot.com/en/company-info/basics_of_the_power_market/negative_prices . From a holistic economic point of view, it makes sense for customers to adopt their energy usage to the current price on the market. However, this is hindered as endusers pay proportionally to their total consumption.
Using smartmeters, the volatile energy prices could be transparently used to bill the customers. They then can have web-enabled devices that based on the current electric price e.g. charge the electric vehicle or cool the fridge further than usually. Thereby, the electric price is stabilized, as demand is coupled to price.
Additionally, the price can depend on if power needs to be transmitted through the grid.
Using this measures, the usage of the transmission grid is minimized, and local production/consumption maximized, leading to cheaper and stable power and higher share of renewables.
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