Investment ideas from the one-house grid – part II

If dad had decided to buy an LCD TV rather than a plasma TV, the demand from his 60" TV might have been reduced by as much as 200-300 watts, depending on the models, and this in turn would have reduced peak load.

Investments

Each of the above solutions leads to an investment, and as intermittent power sources grow as a percentage of total generation, the needs for these solutions will increase. Below is a selection of companies working to provide each of the above solutions to the overall problem of matching electrical supply and demand.

Electricity storage

Electricity storage can serve several related needs of the grid. First, it can absorb excess supply of power at times of otherwise low demand, which means that intermittent and baseload sources of power do not need to be curtailed, even though they are producing power at near zero marginal cost.



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