Smart demand management hasn't been rolled out because there are many different people involved who would all like to pocket the profits.
Eg. a tesla plugged in at 6pm could shift it's charging time to earn quite a profit on the realtime-priced wholesale electricity markets.
* Tesla et al (the company) would like to make that money - in the lifetime of a car, it could be tens of thousands of dollars. They propose to do it with 'virtual power plants' which can make/use power and trade on the power market.
* The homeowner would like to make that money too. Through the use of manually setting timers to use power at cheaper times and having a peak/off-peak plan.
* The electricity distributor would like to make that money - by mandating that devices like cars and water heaters be remotely controllable by them, so that they can buy less of the most expensive power generation.
* Electricity generators would like to make that money too - by not doing any demand management, prices vary more widely, and they get big profits when they can spin up gas turbines to cover that peak demand.
Technically, none of the above ideas are hard to implement - but each party blocks policies and rules that move in the direction of someone else making the money.
SRP in Phoenix Arizona has a form of this, I’m currently switching to it.
They have peak/off-peak rates with an additional monthly fee based off your maximum kilowatt usage in any 30minute on-peak interval. They also integrate with an ecobee thermostat (and give a $100 credit for buying them - just got two for $50 a piece) and will automatically adjust your thermostat up by at most 4 degrees during on-peak conservation events where demand is spiking in the valley. They can even pre-cool your house by 2 degrees prior to the event on off-peak rates to try and comfortably get you through the conservation event.
I’ve configured my pool pump to turn off during peak hours and will avoid doing dishes and laundry during peak. I imported last years hourly usage into spreadsheet and ran the numbers. If my math is right, I should save on average between $100 and $200 per month on electric (I’ve had winter bills as low as $150 and summer bills as high as $750!).
What is your $/kwh rate? I've also been a resident of the desert southwest, but that bill seems insane, about 5x what my bills were. At the time, I think we were paying around $0.13/kwh peak and $0.09/kwh off-peak. You may just have a much nicer/bigger spread, though
Between $0.0829 and $0.1299 depending on peak/off-peak and seasonal. 3k sq ft house built in 2004.
Switching to their Time Of Use Demand plan, which it doesn’t seem like they have a public page for. It’s substantially cheaper per kwh than TOU - as low as $0.03 - but they have a fee for your peak demand in the month as high as $17 per excess kw.
I don’t (currently) think water is wasted in any meaningful way by my swimming pool. When it evaporates it turns to water vapor. Then it comes back down as liquid water when it rains. There is an argument that we put extra work into this water to transport it and make it potable - but PHX’s water is positive sum. Water demand in the valley is accounted for during construction and sourcing it is part of the project cost. I’m also prepared to pay the cost of continued sourcing of water over time as the valley grows - including projects like desalination.
Arizona takes a very practical approach to water management which is part of why I chose to live here. We take a true positive sum approach that I believe in, humans can do this. We find water where it exists and transport it into a desert. We’ve built a human settlement in a space where very little life has chosen to live - distancing ourselves from the biosphere seems like a solid play.
Our approach to water is part of why we are able to give up so much from our pull on Lake Mead during this drought. Nevada is giving up 21k acre-feet, Mexico 80k af, and AZ is giving up a whopping 512k af. Nothing as far as I know for cutbacks from CA's draw.
If it doesn’t work out, I dont understand a worst case scenario less than “move closer to water”
I'm not an AZ resident but this seems the exact opposite of sustainable. It sounds like mining: yes, technically the metal or whatever is still somewhere out there in the world, but no longer usable or accessible to humans after it has been used the first time.
Using water is sustainable - life has been doing it since the beginning - it's where you pull that water from that really matters. Water has a natural cycle where the earth recycles it. Sustainability is making sure your draw from earth's reservoirs are in balance with the rate the earth is replenishing them.
If you pump water out of your groundwater table faster than the water cycle replenishes it - that isn't sustainable. If you draw from lakes faster than the water shed and streams replenish them - that isn't sustainable.
The Salt River Project in Arizona carefully monitors the water shed, reservoir levels, and ground water levels to sustainably provide water to the valley. Arizona seeks out new sources of water that will provide sustainable water moving forward. When we build - we take water demand into consideration and source water upfront. Yes we have pools and water parks, but we plan for those and work to make them sustainable. We don't just let almond farmers tap our ground water and drain our water tables like some neighboring states. It helps that the only solution for us is a sustainable solution; the only way to survive here in the desert is to have a sustainable water supply.
To GP's point, many of these measurements are showing that humans are unsustainably pulling from these reservoirs. The levels are dropping, lakes are running dry, and rivers aren't making it to the ocean. But, when I look at the numbers, I can't say it's Arizona causing that. Arizona seems to be doing it's diligence in sustainably using water. I can't say the same for our neighboring states.
"Arizona seeks out new sources of water that will provide sustainable water moving forward."
We need breathing room!
Arizona is a desert, and there are ... googles ... 7 million people living there that should not be. There are 300 golf courses! There should be ZERO open air heavily-manicured grass golf courses in a landlocked desert.
When people joke that if you want to settle mars, let's settle Antarctica, it's closer and easier to do... well, the REAL settling-mars project is Arizona.
I've also heard that Las Vegas, another middle of the desert atrocity, is also 100% water efficient.
I've also been told about things like "clean coal", "fracking doesn't turn farmers water on fire", "pesticides are safe", "global warming isn't real", and a host of other big fat lies that you'll only discover are wrong in the future when it is too late.
So either you are being mendacious, or you are happily eating the big lie served up to you on a platter.
> that you'll only discover are wrong in the future when it is too late
Too late for what? If what you’re saying is true - we won’t be able to reliably move water to the desert over the next 1000 years. Then Arizona won’t have enough water and those people will have to move closer to a water source. But is Arizona reducing the amount of available water on Earth? I feel like you’re referring to a long-term ecological crisis that this is causing, but I’m failing to see it.
Depends how well they cover it (temporarily with a cover or permanently with a gable/roof or completely indoor pool). Transpiration from lawn grass will evaporate a similar amount of water as an outdoor uncovered pool. At least they don't have to worry about heating it in AZ. Ideally their air conditioner would dump heat into the pool for any heating (no idea if pool heaters are a thing in AZ).
No cover due to its odd shape. During summer months I use evaporative cooling to keep the pool cool enough to swim. To do this, we intentionally run the water feature to increase the evaporation rate - evaporating water takes the higher energy water molecules and ejects them from the pool reducing the temp.
We also use a pool heater about 3 months out of the year. Never considered the A/C condenser as a heater. Initial thought is that the time of year you need to heat the pool is the time of year you aren’t running your A/C.
Hasn't been rolled out in the US, although that's shifting as well. My employer (Tibber) have hundreds of thousands of paying customers in EU, and the bulk of the pitch is that we smart-schedule your EV and home heating to hit low prices, and sell ancillary services (eg. stop your charger for ~15s to help grid do frequency control).
While people may argue over who should get what slice of the pie, I think the situation in Europe has already answered that: you, the owner of the EV and charger or heat pump, get the pie.
I think Tibbers business model is good here: We charge a flat (~$5) monthly fee to smart-schedule your assets and buy electricity for you, and then you get ~100% of the profit from your demand-responsive asset. We also make some money if you spend less $$ on energy, since we settle daily with producers, but monthly with you, so lower cost of financing if you spend less.
The major blocker to more demand response, at least in EU, is the pace at which countries (looking at you Germany) roll out meters capable of hourly remote reading.
People are usually aware of Big Oil but often forget that power generation and distribution companies also have they own interests (and are able to buy politicians).
Unsurprisingly, they dislike distributed/democratized power generation and storage.
A market that works properly depends on electricity market design[1], and the design of regulations for the network, the generators, and the consumers. Each country has solved this in their own way, some networks have successful regulations and some don’t. I live in New Zealand and the market[2] works okay (although it helps that NZ is reasonably functional compared to many other countries).
The network/grid infrastructure is mostly a natural monopoly: infrastructure which requires communal long-term goals via regulations and the infrastructure cannot be run as a normal pure-profit business.
Generators and consumers need an electricity market designed to meet capacity and other[3] goals (link mentions: Ancillary Services, Frequency Keeping, Over-frequency reserve, Instantaneous reserve, Black Start, Voltage support, Automatic Under Frequency Load Shedding (AUFLS), Dispatch-Capable Load Station Setup, Frequency Keeper Selection, Infeasibilities, Load Forecasting, Offer and Bid Setup, Scheduling and Dispatch, etcetera).
I like your point. It is hard to design regulations to avoid the monopoly capture your examples show, and how to have a functional regulator that isn’t captured, and a market that encourages participants to develop functioning systems. Tesla needs some incentive to build and maintain a system to optimise charging schedules and load shedding.
I've long suspected that the most viable path (only viable path?) is for Tesla to capture the profits and share a percentage with the equipment owner.
Since the payoff to the homeowner happens "in front of the meter," it gets around the bureaucratic nightmare of fixing the perverse incentives in electricity pricing (eg the flat rate problem /u/rr808 mentions). All you need is one large aggregator to participate in the real-time wholesale market, issue commands to the "fleet," and divvy up the profits.
I think the API already exists since you can use the phone app (e.g.) to control charging. I haven't looked at this for some time but while the API isn't/wasn't open it's been reverse engineered and I think there's an ecosystem using those APIs (not for this purpose but for other purposes).
EDIT: I think in my location all that has to happen for demand to shift is for the power company (BC Hyrdo in this case) to offer different rates. They can do this statically or dynamically and one way or another things will shift. As a person I can figure out to charge my car or heat my house/water or whatnot for a lower cost. I don't think they care.
We switched to a new power company purely based on rates. They offer free power for a 3 hour slot between 9pm and midnight.
We spent $2k on hardware to take advantage - a 7kw fast charger for the EV and a clockwork timer for the water tank.
In return we could load shift so much that 45% of our power is now free. That's with no other behavior changes (well one small change - family members became aware that having long hot showers in the day meant a lukewarm shower at night).
All super simple, and all driven from the bottom up by specific rates.
That sounds pretty great. I can't imagine my utility, PG&E, doing the same. Their TOU rates start at about the same as their tiered rates and go up from there. Even under maximal load shifting that plan costs me more than the simpler (yet still complicated) plan.
Instead it's more economical for me to drive my grid dependence to zero. I'm one of the "no thanks" folks in the article.
This is exactly the perverse pricing problem that Tesla (or someone else) can easily solve with aggregation+Autobidder.
Tesla knows your utility rate, including the absence or presence of time-of-use billing. They also have access to the real-time market behind the meter. In this position, they can always Do The Right Thing to minimize total cost of EV charging (electric bill minus earned Autobidder revenue).
In your case the Right Thing sounds like choosing the tiered PG&E rate, and letting Tesla aggregation pay you for load shifting.
I have no interest in letting Tesla, or anybody else, capture that value. Nor do I have any interest in propping up a failing grid at my own expense. I've been DIYing-at comically low cost-my way towards an off-grid electrified home. And I've driven up my energy consumption and quality of life dramatically while also reducing my costs and environmental footprint.
Looking at my data so far, it's cheaper for me to have a tiny gasoline generator to fill in under the quite-rare shortfalls (e.g., the two continuously rainy weeks in December where I don't quite charge up my batteries during the day, and I need to run heating overnight) than it is to pay the minimum grid connection charge.
I expect that as our local grid costs continue to skyrocket at about 4x CPI, and with distributed generation costs coming down, that many more folks will do the same.
It's fascinating how the economics play out. Thanks to this deal, it no longer makes sense for us to go solar or to have a house battery. So the power company has us as a loyal customer (at least, while they keep offering this deal).
Every EV already has this API, it’s just exposed to the “charger” not the internet.
Because all EV need to negotiate with the charger their plugged into to determine if they can charge, and how fast. It pretty easy to build a charger compatible with any EV that simply caps the cars charging rate until electricity is cheap.
Here in Europe at least, there are already several companies that make these chargers, including ones that just MitM the cable between your car and your normal charger, and allow you get better rates though aggregation with other owners.
No, do what you want, stick with giving Tesla thousands of dollars a year instead of opting into the coop that runs the simple algorithm and gives you the money.
The algorithm isn't awfully complex. If it's 6pm, and you need your car charged by 6am, and you need to be charging for 6 hours, then you just purchase the cheapest 6 energy futures for the 6 hours you know you'll need, and don't purchase the other 6.
If at any time during the night the prices of the unpurchased futures drop below that of the ones you have purchased, you can sell one and buy a different one (rescheduling the charge).
There isn't any better algorithm within those constraints. As long as the energy futures market is a fully liquid market, the price you'll get will be (on average) equal to the spot price you would have paid if you'd made the ideal scheduling decisions and bought on the spot market.
Fair point. For car charging the algorithm can be relatively simple (if suboptimal due to imperfect assumptions like "fully liquid"), but for stationary batteries + solar it gets much more complex.
I still suspect more sophisticated players will find easy ways to "game" such an algorithm (eg pre-bidding). Whenever you have a large herd of predictable sheep, it's an opportunity for a wolf.
I’m specifically saying this “energy HOA” sounds miserable/time-consuming just to run my car, and if people immediately have a negative reaction like that then the “solution” is potentially very flawed, if for no other reason than it hurts adoption. There’s no need to get so hostile over a simple critique. I also don’t think it’s reasonable to assume a “simple algorithm” will solve this.
For the record, I don’t own a Tesla and I don’t want to. I have no plans of giving Elon Musk any of my business.
I don’t think this is quite true, although their maybe local politics that are making it true in certain areas.
Each of the demand response techniques you mentioned address a different concern, and are all complimentary to each other.
Planning and managing grid capacity happens on many different timescales. From decade long planning of large scale infrastructure, through to the millisecond-by-millisecond management that occurs during a grid crisis.
Each of the techniques you mention create a demand response effect at different timescales.
Simple multi-rate tariffs that offer different rates and different times of day, create macro scale changes in a grids daily demand curve. Reducing the peaks, and filling in the troughs, allowing distributors to reduce their total future CapEx spend.
Virtual power plants like Tesla allow distributors to “buy electricity” for cheaper than buying it from peaked plants for periods where they known that total demand is going high, and cheaper energy producers are already saturated. You’re operating on timescale looking a few hours or a few days into the future here. It’s important to note that Tesla themselves are creating addition value here, beyond simple tariff changes. Teslas virtual power plant will be committing themselves to a guaranteed load reduction at a specific period of time in the near future, failure to produce that reduction means Tesla has to buy extra electricity to make up the shortfall at extremely inflated rates. So Tesla create value through the efficient and accurate aggregation and management of many cars, dealing with issue like cars being unplugged, or already charged and varying levels of owner participation.
Electricity distributors requesting remote control is less effective than Tesla’s approach, because the distributor now has to carry all the risk associated with loads ignoring their commands. It’s basically impossible for them to mandate control, not unless their gonna employ the plug police to make sure nobody wires up a heater without telling them. Ultimately distributors can create and enforce load mandates by simple refusing to upgrade electrical connections to provide more supply, and downrating existing ones. This is already how industrial electricity supply works.
The number of types of demand response a specific load supports isn’t zero sum, it’s multiplicative. Each additional form of demand response supported creates additional value, and markets already exist to price that value.
In parts of the world with well functioning energy markets, the issues of how best to do demand response are handled by the energy markets. Each type of demand response (generally measured on two axis, speed of response and reliability of response) creates value for different market players. They can then create schemes to buy different types of demand response that fits their needs, or it can be bought though existing markets. The final piece of the puzzle is figuring out how properly aggregate individual loads into a large enough fleet that it can have a meaningful impact on the grid.
Unfortunately you changing the charging times on a Tesla has very little impact on the grid. But changing the charging time of 10,000 Tesla’s, now that might buy you a seat in the energy markets.
With modern technology there are much more interesting things you can do, esp if you combine with battery storage and real time pricing.
One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat rate all the time. There is no incentive for people not to use electricity during those huge peaks which really drives generation costs. Ideally people would not cook/clean/heat water/charge anything during those hot summer afternoons or cold dark windless evenings. Your electric water heater is a good example of it could be saving costs by charging when its windy/sunny/low demand periods and even better lower water temperature so wont be so hot when prices are high. Smart EV charging is even more important, if you leave the car plugged in every night, but with logic so some hours it'll charge quickly and maybe some nights not at all.
Denmark has a mix of flat rate and hour-based variable rates. In my case prices are often 3 timers higher in "rush hours" (typically weekdays 5pm to 8pm, 17:00-20:00) than during a midday in a weekend with a lot of wind.
I cannot choose flat-rate due to the situation in Ukraine.
edit: This map is very good to see the price and source of electricity in Europe (and how well the countries are interconnected): https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DK-DK1
Yes Denmark is a great example of high proportion of Wind power where it could make a big difference. I'm not sure what the hour-based variable rates are - do you know what the price is so you can change usage? Is power free or very cheap on windy days?
Tomorrow, that's cool. Its the whole point to be able to adjust your usage based on the market. I was thinking appliances can be smart enough to get the pricing to adjust usage, but if you can see tomorrow you can adjust your life yourself.
> One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat rate all the time.
One of the problems with real-time energy pricing is: poor people don’t have the cash on hand to replace their furnaces or upgrade their insulation- or worse yet rent and can’t improve energy efficiency at all.
It’s difficult to raise prices enough to make it economically rational for middle class types to get batteries and heat pumps without reducing the poor to poverty.
Yep, or worse the real-time energy pricing causes the highest prices during weather crises introducing ethical issues, such as during the 2021 Texas Winter Storm on customers using real-time energy pricing plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis#Power_...
Sometimes consumer smart grid gets evangelized as 'the fourth industrial revolution' - Dr. Simon Michaux argues the material blindness of it in such a way that only the rich may experience it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pt3ioQuNc&t=625s ( Dr. Simon Michaux: “Minerals and Materials Blindness” | The Great Simplification #19 with Nate Hagens ).
You could just cap the max price and let the grid make it up during other times. That's basically what time of day billing does anyway: a blended approach to electricity rates that averages out but provides some incentive.
Of course, my jurisdiction rolled out time-of-day billing and found that demand shifted only a few percent, so I wonder if the program even covered its costs for smaller users.
And the funded programs which offer rebates for upgrades are a pain to navigate, even if you know they exist. Even if you overcome the awareness, procedures, etc. hurdles, the financial relief (rebate) is often too delayed to affect decision making when struggling financially.
I don't expect zero energy costs to arrive at the consumers. Prices will artificially be inflated based on demand. The only way for consumers to profit will be to not play the game and go as much off grid as possible. But then you explicitly do not need smart meters.
> There is no incentive for people not to use electricity during those huge peaks
Is that documented / true on a large scale? Anecdotally, I know a few people who turn on the clothes dryer, dishwasher, etc. at night or schedule the washing machine to start at 5am to run them on the lower tariff period. Maybe it's not very common though.
> One of the main issues is that for residential pays a flat rate all the time. There is no incentive for people not to use electricity during those huge peaks
I’ve you’ve got a lower rate at night, then you dont’t have flat rate tariff. Something very common in most of the world. Having a lower night rate means you obviously have an incentive, that’s the entire reason it’s offered.
Depends on the utility/state. Some have different rates depending on time of day. Where I live does not. We pay a straight per kwh rate regardless of when used and how “spikey” our pattern is. The total per month is segregated into tiers, so the per kwh rate is incrementally higher as your total consumption climbs.
This is a good description of electric rate tariff which is becoming more prevalent in USA. It depends on what rate tariffs are approved by the regulator.
Ontario Canada found that residential Time of Use (TOU) billing only shifted demand by 3% at the beginning of rollout, diminishing to 1% shifting in subsequent years. And "little evidence of conservation".
And "General service class [IE: commercial] customers show little evidence of load shifting behavior and are less responsive to the TOU prices than residential customers. However, general service class customers show some mixed evidence of conservation, although this is still marginal."
But they don't like to publish this info much. Smart meters were controversial (from it's giving me headaches, to this costs a lot of money for ? benefit over regular metering).
Electric utility pricing is regulated to be based on Return on Equity, so if they could increase their capital base through smart meter infra and cut the opex of meter readers, it economically benefits the utility, but not the consumer.
If it costs more to precisely meter than the savings for 99% of individuals, it was a bad (forced) program to upgrade to smart meter infra - it's not free. Could have invested the money into demand reduction (free LED bulbs, insulation loans etc.) or supply improvements.
Don't overspend on getting to 100% fairness.
Same reason why if you ask for a meter audit, they'll do nothing if it's +/- 2%, even though anything other than 0.000000000000000000000000% error is unfair.
The GB grid has half-hourly pricing for retail customers (with a cap and floor to prevent exposure to full wholesale risk i.e. not like those Gridly clowns in Texas).
Also depending on residential they might not care about price. Like I don't. I live in apartment. So best I can do is choose some activities. And even then I could save what couple dozen euros? Maximum of hundred? Just easier to not really have the mental load to think about it.
Yeah, I lived in a rental apartment where they wanted to rebate the average electricity cost and run the metered electricity scam. But at a ~$40 rent reduction and a $13/month account fee, you'd have to reduce your electricity consumption to 33% below average just to break even.
All so the installer/metering provider can buy a bigger yacht.
Hard to do conserve much when the apartment operator provides your major appliances (typical in north america), no dishwasher, laundry is in a central laundry room, and HVAC+hot water are centrally provided.
Would do a lot better if they just ran a program to replace all of our light bulbs/fixtures.
There was an electricity provider in Texas that charged market rate plus a small markup. They were crucified when the freeze happened last year and they continued to charge market rate plus a small markup. They also went bankrupt.
Yeah, that's why I said "most". Texas is an especially weird case because of their almost total lack of regulation around pricing. From what I gather there were actually a number of power providers in Texas that charged cost plus. I don't know if any of them still exist but I'm sure there's demand for it because it's such a good deal most of the time.
1. When the price of power went up, everyone spontaneously decided that charging the market rate for power was evil and the company deserved to be destroyed.
2. The company delivered a lot of power at high market rates because customers demanded it. But those customers then refused to pay (and in many cases weren't able to pay), which is why the company went bankrupt.
It doesn't matter so much that there's demand if the government and the population all hate you and you can't collect the money you're theoretically owed.
Use sand [1] instead of water and you'll be able to store a lot more energy in a limited area. Water can't be heated above 98°C at atmospheric pressure which puts a limit on how much energy can be stored per m³ while sand can be heated above 1000°C without problems. Add enough insulation and you'll be able to store enough heat to warm your house through the long winter. Sand is cheap, non-corrosive and doesn't freeze or boil [2]. The specific heat for sand (830 J/g K) is markedly lower than that for water (4000 J/g K) but the density is ~50% higher. Together with the much higher temperature spectrum this translates to a higher capacity per m³.
In the sense that something that is frozen can't freeze. Apparently the melting point of sand is about 1700°C, so 1000°C sand indeed should handle about the same as 20°C sand or -100°C sand. That does sound rater neat for a large scale setup.
In a small-scale setup the convection currents, easy handling and lower insulation requirements of a water setup would probably still win out.
If water tank holds water above 70C, it’s safety requirements make it significantly more expensive. Plus water close to the boiling temperature is rather corrosive. So I cannot rule out that even for small scale sand setup will be cheaper.
Residential water heaters, at least in the USA, don't typically go above 60°C. So there's room to grow here, at least for now, without building a more exotic, and therefore expensive, system.
That would be especially interesting for hours with negative energy prices (at least once they become accessible for retail customers). Also various appliances like washing machines or dish washers can be timed
> Also various appliances like washing machines or dish washers can be timed
In theory. Then the fire department comes and says "do not run washing machines and dish washers while you're asleep or away". And with that you're back to running them during peak hours.
We just had that discussion in the media here, due to the introduction of peak power as a part of the electricity bill.
Also insurance companies. Your home insurance might cover water damage from appliance going wrong, but if you aren't present or sleeping they might try to get out of it... And single bigger leak will waste any gains from price savings for years or forever...
They know because they have to put out the fire in the middle of the night, and they do an investigation afterwards to determine the cause of the fire so they know it was e.g. the washing machine.
Presumably the fire department is merely offering advice, because they’ve been called out to dryer fires. And they’re the fire department, not the energy efficiency department.
At Octopus Energy, I think we’ve made negative prices available to retail customers (at least in the UK, not sure about the other countries we’re retailing in).
People getting paid to charge their cars because the grid has a surplus of (probably green) energy.
I just want to compliment Octopus Energy, I just tried popping over for a quote, and the website just says "No. You don't want to switch right now". Not sure if this is common with other energy suppliers, but it looks good (I'll remember for when/if I do end up switching next).
This is mandated by OFGEM in the UK now. uSwitch will also give you the current "best deal".
I have done some work with the Octopus systems and they are very new an agile, but don't handle the complexity that the big 6 have put in place over several decades. The overall metering and settlements business in the UK is quite complex especially including legacy gas and elec accounts and meters.
I don't have skin in the game but the electromechanical computers of the previous eras were all superb and solid yet digital electronics wiped the market away. Making a simple analogy (sic) I'd say the smart grid thing might be a glimpse of where society is going. Or it might be a marketing fad.
There have been a few, like the Norden bomb site, but they were pretty far from anything we’d consider a general purpose computer. They also were not as accurate or reliable as was initially expected.
1) 1950s era technology, so well understood
2) Comically cheap vs storage
3) Instant response
4) No/low inconvencience - well insulated boilers hold temp of 24hr+
It's such an easy win to shave the top off the evening peak & thus reduces need for battery storage.