Time of Day Pricing in Texas

A CleanTechnica reader recently sent a story on Texas time of day pricing to me, with a few notes.

Quickly, the general news: “TXU Energy has rolled out a new three-tiered rate plan designed for customers who watch their household budgets and are willing to make some changes in when they fire up the dishwasher or do laundry. The power retailer also says its new plan is a sensible option for homes with solar installations or an EV in the driveway.

“Offering lower rates during specific periods – time-of-use rates – mimics the fluctuations in wholesale electricity costs that occur throughout the day. Perry said TXU has structured its new rate plan so over 90% of the hours in a year are nighttime or off-peak hours. And the difference between peak and nighttime rates is substantial: Compare peak rates (from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, May through October) of 21.9 cents per kilowatt hour to the discounted nighttime rates (10 p.m. to 6 a.m. all year) of 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour.”

Here’s a table of the rates from the press release:

Now, some notes from our insightful reader:

$0.068 per kWh nighttime means 2.4 cents per mile for your Nissan Leaf.
$0.219 per kWh for part of the day means that your PV system will pay off sooner. It might be worth tilting it west to do a bit better than $0.155 avg.
The fact that only 10% of all hours are peak is telling. Tells you why it makes no sense to build stuff like nuclear that has to run 24/365 when tight supply hours are limited. Sure argues for more solar in Texas.

Totally! And as discussed before, Texas has an insane amount of solar energy potential.

Tomctheman

What makes the energy during the night? Wind is still intermittent and can’t be counted on to ensure 60Hz and the correct voltage at all times. I agree that wind and solar must be integral to the energy portfolio, but you still need plants that can be relied on at all times. Considering the pollution from coal and, although to a lesser degree, from natural gas it seems that nuclear is a good bet.

Anonymous

Nothing can be counted on to ” ensure 60Hz and the correct voltage at all times. ”

Nuclear, coal, whatever – it’s going to be down some of the time. Utility grid operators deal with abrupt changes in supply and demand all the time.
Right now when the wind is up grid managers can cut back on natural gas, coal or hydro. Later we’ll likely have lots of storage to fill in the gaps, but we’re a long way from needing storage right now. There’s plenty fossil fuel generation to shut off. And there are promising battery technologies moving into the manufacturing phase. Zinc-air and sodium-ion batteries look promising for grid use. They use low cost materials and are easy to manufacture.

Nuclear is expensive, takes a long time to build, and we have no idea what to do with the millions of tons of hazardous waste we’ve got now.

Here’s what National Geographic tells us about the huge amount of problematic ‘stuff’ we already have. Gifts for those who follow us….
“What’s to be done with 52,000 tons (47,000 metric tons) of dangerously radioactive spent fuel from commercial and defense nuclear reactors? With 91 million gallons (345 million liters) of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, scores of tons of plutonium, more than half a million
tons of depleted uranium, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools,
metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste? And with some 265
million tons (240 million metric tons) of tailings from milling uranium
ore—less than half stabilized—littering landscapes? ”

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/index.html

Seamus Dubh

So tell me what happens when people shift there lives to this off peek time frame enough that their collective energy usage becomes equal to if not higher than the original peek time frame?

Anonymous

The price of electricity, overall drops.

It drops because utility companies won’t have to call on gas peaker plants or buy expensive power from further away.

And it drops because they can use more cheap wind power.

(Peak, not peek…..)