Y2Kyoto: South Africa Waves Hello

Y2Kyoto 25 Comments

There’s an old joke about weaning the dog off food by reducing his ration by a kibble each day, until one day, he didn’t need food at all.

As summer heat strikes, the US grid increasingly relies on a kind of invisible weapon — the “virtual power plant” — to prevent blackouts.

Each VPP brings together large numbers of homes and businesses whose owners have agreed to use less electricity when needed — or even send some of their own back to the grid — in exchange for a financial incentive.

Participants just have to let the operators take control of their usage to balance supply and demand when the system’s under stress, usually by setting the thermostat a few degrees higher or tapping electric vehicles and on-site batteries.

Pool enough customers, and it makes a big difference. Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce.

25 Replies to “Y2Kyoto: South Africa Waves Hello”

  2. Build your own power source. Crypto, government surveillance, and EVs are raising your cost!

  3. This was proposed in 1988’s Demand/Supply Plan by Ontario Hydro. All utilities do at least some of this by paying customers NOT to use their product. And it seems to work as expected. At least until August 10, 2003 comes along and the entire grid of eastern North America collapses for about two days.

  4. If the average nuke produces 9.3GW in a day (Brave AI search result), that’s 306.9 GW “saved” each day. Does that smell like BS to anyone else?

    1. Tell me how you store what was saved? Oh right, you don’t. That is why it smells Marc, you are correct.

    2. Of course it’s bullshit, and Brave AI is a bit off, a single unit at Darlington produces about 16GW a day.

      So I’ll assume they took the number of households in the US (131 Million), and using your number of 307GW, with the average household using about 10500 kWh/year, calculated out that if they reduced their power consumption by 10% (2.335kW), they get to that number.

      Except, all they are doing really is moving the consumption around, and potentially spending more energy later when the control is returned from the collective VPP to the individual who decides he wants to be comfortable.

      And Ontario’s experiment with this should provide empirical data that it doesn’t work.

    3. In the US, an average reactor produces about 0.9 GW, do you are only off by an order of magnitude. That would be about 24*.9 =21.6 GW-H in a day.

      But yes, the VPP estimate is total BS.

  5. Every “Green Energy-Net Zero” fool should be the first ones conscripted to this madness

  6. “Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce.”

    This is so patently stupid that it is unbelievable some with any knowledge of electricity can say that.

    Of course the plan is to take effect after everyone reading it will be dead, so the lie will not be noticed.

  7. These people are gaslighting the population. They act as though this is some big technological revelation, when in reality it is businesses and residents handing sovereignty of their electrical consumption over to the state or the utility companies. They then push your thermostat higher and higher during a heatwave, so as to not have to increase generating capacity, because they have been mandated by government, who have been cowed into more expensive “renewable” energy projects. Has anyone ever asked the “greens” what makes their solar, wind, tidal, etc projects renewable? The only renewable aspect is the renewed trips to the government subsidy trough. Solar and wind last about 20 years, whereas nuclear and hydro go on for decades.

  9. We used to harvest blocks of ice from frozen lakes, and use them through the summer to keep stuff cool. Today we run electrically powered refrigeration units to do that. At some price point, it might be the old ways were maybe not best, but at least competitive. New industry for Inuvik! A reason for a railway to the North!

    1. absolutely. my aunt back in the 60s surprised and delighted l knew all about ice houses without ever seeing one. and your assessment is spot on; take the given trends much further and there we are.
      lm ready. lm ‘psychologically preparing’ myself to hone self sufficiency skills and alternate lifestyle.
      just me and the doggies and pluck away at my guitar and SCAAAREW otta(was) and queens park

  11. ‘south africa waves hello’
    aaaaah jeez Kate, should have been a standup comedy joke writer.
    maybe you are incognito. certainly lots of material from your blog lol

  12. If you’re going to let the government ration your energy, you may as well let them ration your kibble and support the endgame of the Elites.

  14. Here in CA … EVERYONE … is a virtual power plant shutdown. How? $$$$$$$$$$$ … State regulators approve each and every rate increase by PG&E … because the higher the prices the less energy is used. Yeah … we are given a “financial incentive” … use the energy you need for a comfortable lifestyle and GO BROKE !!! Some incentive.

    But if you are a Silicon Valley elite … meh. … what’s a $2,000.00/mo. energy bill … petty cash.

  15. Electricity is a commodity like carrots, fry-pans and apartments. If there is a demand for more carrots, you simply grow more — rationing carrots and electricity is absurd. But welcome to the new reality in which men can win medals for battering women.

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