• AA5B@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    A prerequisite has to be smart appliances, and not in the current sense of a great way to milk more money from a customer through advertising and lock-in.

    My thermostat, dishwasher, washer, dryer, car charger have timers so I can schedule them overnight (typical for cheaper electricity in the past, before solar). But other appliances don’t, and none can respond to less predictable changes in rates.

    Do standard solar installs have the smarts to trigger appliances based on what they’re generating? Most of them are “smart” but they’ll only talk about monitoring and bill paying. I’ve been trying to find that out all summer but solar providers don’t know or are otherwise unable to answer.

    I’m all for dynamic pricing of electricity but we don’t have the appliance intelligence to support it. That can take decades to roll out so we need to nail this down NOW