TXU offering free electricity at night

Free won't last long, but really low night rates might. The trouble with "free" is that it motivates waste as well as use. The advantage is that some folks will start to change their habits (or vehicles) to take advantage of a long term change.

Certainly makes it clear that the lack of utility solar power at night is not a severe problem where wind is available.

 

TXU is being forward looking. Free at night may be cheaper for them. When more wind is added, they can not get rid of the night power of their coal plants they may need to shut them down in winter and restart them. The grid needs the power in the summer. Bringing up night demand is thought by many to be the cheapest thing for the texas grid. NRG feels the same way, which is why they are installing so many car chargers. It costs them money now, but if electric cars go on the grid they can sell them power at night. No matter what we expect very inexpensive power here at night 20 years from now. TXU is getting a jump on it.

The higher the night demand on a texas smart grid, the more wind that can be added.

Texas may be different than many places when it comes to wind power, and day demand. Solar is well less than 1%, so it really is too early to worry about needing it at night. If you get above 10% things might change, but no one in the US will get there for a long time. The bigger problem right now is upgrading the grid to handle more renewable power. ERCOT is doing this, but the eastern and western grids need a lot of effort.

 

They are obviously headed in the right direction. My problem is there are many individuals who will abuse a good thing.

Where I live we have a similar situation with reclaimed water. Early on, there was a lot more reclaimed water than the system could distribute. As a result, it is unmetered in many areas. This causes many to intentionally waste it and demonstrate to the world how wasteful they can be with it. A former neighbor actually watered his lawn for 14 hours a day since he could. (That of course kills the grass!) The "watch how wasteful I can be" mindset unfortunately does a good job recruiting other idiots to behave the same. Even a little metering would make a huge difference as many sitting on the boarderline would not cross.

I just hope TXU does not create a similar batch of bad behavior from their users.

 

lol. TXU is the publically traded utility taken over by groups that wanted it to build less coal. They and NRG, the huge new jersey based utility, are the big coal users in Texas. There are plenty of wasteful people on the grid, but most of the bad waste is during the day. Both coal and wind are helped versus natural gas by night demand. All the utilities benefit in the texas type of regulation/deregulation from more plug in cars. TXU is competeing with wind utilities for plug-ins. They are adding 2.5 cents to their day rate to offer the free night rate.

Hey their primary market is the Dallas area, plenty of bad behavior there no matter what. If some guy wants to drive his tesla or leaf at 80mph on free electricity, hell, I support him.