If you can convince every supermarket in the area to designate a quarter of their overhead lights as "optional," and then install a device that allows the "virtual power plant operator" to turn off all of those lights during an unexpected spike in electricity demand, you've just "generated" the additional 100kW the grid needed in that moment, just like a regular fossil-fuel power plant would have. (And you then pay the supermarket for the electricity they "generated" by turning off their lights.)
Do the same with smart thermostats, or tapping into people's power walls, etc etc etc, and you may be able to "generate" many megawatts of power without owning a plant.
With phones becoming the “hub” of many homes and Apple launching some (nearly inconsequential) eco-charging functionality in ios17 to avoid charging with emitting sources are running in your area, I could see them really executing on this.
(I also wish my fridge and other devices had a better ability to capture the ebb and flow of electricity prices. Even trying to do this with a “smart” thermostat, an ecobee was very difficult. Required lots of manual scheduling.)
I have a LG fridge that can reduce its power consumption when requested. I have never seen it turn on though, so it must require some coordination by the utility that isn't there yet.
I’m on time of use billing, and I don’t want my fridge to reduce its net power consumption.
In fact, I want it to increase its net power consumption by running hard when rates are low, and backing off when they’re expensive. So overall cost will decrease without any spoilage impacts while consumption goes up.
This approach also minimizes the amount of time the fridge is working against my air conditioner. And maximizes the time it’s working with my furnace on cool nights.
The most thermally/kwh efficient fridge keeps its temperature the same at all times, but that’s not the most cost efficient/climate efficient approach.
It’s like we’re not ready to have that conversation.
