tdgeek:

 

k1wi:

 

The rate of posts in this thread seem to be correlated with the price of power, although maybe a quadratic across the mean price. ;)

 

The biggest limitation for Flick users is the small # of people on a floating price. If you had even just 10% of the country floating, they would have had the incentive to conserve at least something during the peaks, and probably would have had a reasonable impact on the peak prices. My understanding is that the price curve gets rather steep towards the 'top' so even a small reduction in demand would decrease prices substantially. Which is the real benefit of the price signalling.

 

The game changer of course would be something like a price forecast aware heat pump that preheats a little extra before the price spike and lets the house 'go low' a couple of degrees during the peak.  Nest & Ecobee are working with utilities here in the US to provide that. Floating also provides the price incentive for Aredwood's hedging/solar + batteries (my biggest gripe about net-metering). If that can be automated & packaged smartly...

 

Other thought: It's a pity Flick customer's can't fix a proportion of their usage. That is, offer something like a 50/50 fixed/float rate, so half your usage in any given price period is hedged. You could also do something like the free hour of power around fixing/floating - they must have the consumption data now to make that work. Though it would probably have to come at the cost of flick taking a bigger fee per KwH.

 

 

There is a level of incentive. People want to reduce the high winter power bills. I cant see everyone being on a spot price service and dealing with the recent event.

 

If Flick gave a part fixed rate, then off course you will pay a "normal" rate, and if that was 50/50, you halve the annual benefits of ;low spot prices as compared to fixed rates. But you cant expect Flick to charge you a fixed rate while you are chewing through spike spot prices.

 

Historically the recent issue is no big deal,. its been worse. Its normal. Its up to the subscriber to manage it. Conserve where you can, build up a buffer credit on your bill to cater for winter, and self hedging as @aredwood posted   But you cannot expect to get low low spot rates all year then Flick pick up the tab when it spikes.

 

Under fixed rate service the incentive is to use less electricity generally, but it creates a very small incentive to the individual to reduce usage when prices are high (as this reduction is collectively spread across the entire customer base).

The 50/50 split is a hedge against really high prices - yes it costs you some during low prices and saves you some during high prices, but it reduces the risk (or allows you to choose the level of variation you're comfortable with). It would probably need to be fixed for a set period of time to prevent gaming of the seasons, say 1 year intervals or 1 change per 12 month period with the company, but my point is it doesn't have to be all fixed or all float.  Would a family household be comfortable with doing a partial float? Maybe.

I envisage the hour of fixed prices could be say during an hour of the day when you know you usually have some power use that is pretty essential. Given their customer data Flick would be able to price the fixed fee according to their costs.