They do that too, with large commercial users with loads that can easily be shed for short periods such as blast furnaces, aluminium smelters, refrigeration systems etc.
Agreed, but we now have the technology to do these at much smaller scales, which, in aggregate, account for a lot of the load.
It just bother me when we focus on big industrial solutions.
We had the right idea with PV solar: why build a giant farm owned by ??? when we already have these structures everywhere tilted toward the sun and grid-connected.
> Agreed, but we now have the technology to do these at much smaller scales, which, in aggregate, account for a lot of the load.
A lot of companies have this capacity, but are waiting for the right environment to deploy it. Smart fridges, aircons, nest thermostats, electric cars with Wifi, etc. They have all been built with the capability to load-shed or even power the grid at a moments notice, but the manufacturers refuse to just do that for free - they want to be paid.
Many of those products were even sold at a loss because the companies expected to be paid by electricity networks for their fast-response stabiisation services.
Today, they aren't allowed to participate in the power markets, and anyway, markets are settled on a half-hourly basis rather than the 1-second basis that would earn them the most money and provide the most reliability for the grid.
This is all a politics problem within electricity regulators (who would much rather stick with the status quo, leaving some power stations underutilized, rather than pay these 'unreliable' web 2.0 companies). Nearly none of it is a technical problem.
With car charging, they're doing one better, and can feed power back into the grid: https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to-grid-char...