Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - SECO switching to time of day billing
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Old 06-15-2023, 08:34 AM
Maker Maker is offline
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This is not about the money we pay for power, although that may be a slight side effect.
The goal is to lower maximum power demanded away from the time of day when huge peak times typically happen. If successful, it reduces the need for power generation capability to be high enough just to cover peak times.
Having power plants sitting idle for most of the day is expensive. This is called "spinning reserve". Elimination of that peaking power plant will save SECO a lot of expenses.
The down side is that SECO may not have spinning reserves to handle a sudden unexpected demand. When you hear of rolling blackouts in California, it's because peak demand cannot be handled by all available generators, plus spinning demand reserves.

Going into the future, as people put in solar to try to save money by reducing consumption... and more houses are built... and a very cloudy hot day occurs, the peak demand would spike. Will SECO have sufficient reserve capacity?