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24.02.2021

CL730S23 multi tariff meter

Hello Subscriber

Spring is coming. We haven't had that much snow in Shenzhen up to now. This leads us to the today's topic.
The state of Texas (USA) was last week hit by an unusual Arctic ice storm with temperatures below -30 °C. The power consumption during this period was 30% above the "extreme peak load" scenario, forecasted by the grid operators. At the same time, the wind turbines and gas valves for the conventional generators got frozen. With about 30 GW missing due to malfunctions and the danger of a total blackout, the operators started a large scale rolling blackouts (load shedding).
Temporary more than 4 million customers have been without power. This incident has many aspects, and it's still too early to blame renewable energy as a single factor. With a proper AMI system there would have been other possibilities instead of load shedding.
Since the Texas energy market is deregulated, you can get your power from a various number of suppliers. There are companies, connecting customers directly to the wholesale electricity market for a small monthly fee. This setup can be cheaper and makes some logical sense. When prices go up, the customer has an incentive to use less power. At other times, the price of electricity can even go negative, meaning you can actually get paid to use electricity.
During the time with missing power, the wholesale market was exploding. The price per unit was reaching 9 US$. The news are now full of reports about the astronomical high energy bills.
What do we learn? Take always care to choose the right supplier and the most suitable tariff structure for your needs.
tou 1

Energy Meters and Tariffs

Electronic energy meters are recording the actual power over a certain time. The microprocessor inside of these meters allows all kind of additional calculations.
peak

The TOU Tariff Structure

TOU stands for time of use. It's getting popular together with smart energy meters and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).

Thank you for your interest, have a happy day and stay safe,

Reinhard Günther
and the CLOUGLOBAL Team
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