Great response, thank you Jeff!!!
i'm glad to see they now (finally) offer APIs... i'll definitely take a look at that in detail soon!
Yes the "hourly granularity" makes it hard to optimize individual usages. i guess, it's a bit like gambling at a casino... the more skillful players will win more often, not every time. Over a course of a night (granularity) they will do better than the average player.
So.. some strategies come to mind on how to take advantage of (game) current ComEd policies. Note ComEd can and will change their policies to always favor themselves, like a casino has, especially when more people start to "take advantage".
Some ideas to optimize financial and environmental benefits via hourly-pricing, EVs and Solar PV:
- sign-up for hourly pricing with ComEd
- charge EVs/PHEVs only at night, especially in the Summer
- be very careful of AC use in the day time Summer hours - pre-cool house by turning the thermostat down to 60 until 7am, wear a sweater even if necessary to save some $ like a "5 mile jacket"
- don't bake or cook a lot during peak Summer months
- timeshift all electric-intensive tasks, like an electric clothes dryer or hottub usage to night time (off peak times)
- install a good sized (but not oversized) PV system that especially cranks out the valuable/expensive electricity during the peak Summer days - if the system is too large, it will generate more power per month than is used. NO CREDIT is paid via Net Metering on a bill month to month. Zero net usage for a month is the best that can be achieved financially. Any extra power generated above net zero will be given away freely to ComEd, which would be good for climate-change-Karma-points i guess.
