Thanks for the recent column by Richard Gelinas (“Storing Electricity Is In Our Future,” December 2024).
A little more than 15 years ago, I was a customer of Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. in New York, and I remember all the complaints about the high electricity prices. I feel I should add something to your story highlighting how incentives can change consumer habits.
O & R generated its electricity using fossil fuels. This method requires plants to run at a generating surplus during the night since it takes time to ramp up supply as customers are waking up, switching on the lights, running showers, hair dryers, toasters, you name it.
That surplus just gets wasted, shorted into the ground as electricity that is notoriously difficult to store on a large scale.
So, here’s my point: Peak rates for O & R are close to 42 cents per kilowatt-hour; here we pay about 8 cents. However, during the night their rates drop to less than 3 cents per kWh. For them, 3 cents beats nothing, so they’ve nothing to lose. This is what makes economic sense for battery storage, especially with so many electric vehicles out there. As a Tesla owner, I can attest to the ease of pulling my car into the garage, plugging it in, and walking away. The car then waits, not starting to charge until sometime after midnight.
This is how utilities across the country and around the world should work. They save money, customers save money, and we help save the planet while we’re at it. It’s a win-win.
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