This past Tuesday had me actually optimistic about our grid for once

I live in Phoenix and usually dread summer because of the AC load, but this week we hit 112 degrees and the utility sent a text saying our solar plus storage program shaved 40% off peak demand. I watched the live dashboard from my phone and saw battery banks downtown discharge right at 5pm, exactly when everyone cranks their cooling. It was the first time I felt like the smart grid stuff isn't just marketing fluff, it actually worked in real conditions. My own panels produced 63 kWh that day, way more than my house used, and I sold the excess back at a decent rate. The wild part is that this only worked because 1,200 neighbors signed up for the same program, so it really is a collective thing. Has anyone else seen their local grid do something similar during a heat wave, or is my city just weird?

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blake_williams1mo ago

Man, that sounds like a huge win and not weird at all, more cities need to get on that train. We had something close here in Tucson last August when it hit 110 for like a week straight, and the co-op asked people with batteries to hold off charging until after 6pm, and it actually dropped the peak load enough that they didn't have to fire up an old gas plant. My neighbor has a Powerwall and he was glued to the app watching it dump power back to the grid, said he made like 30 bucks that week just from that. The whole thing only works when enough people join in though, that part you nailed, one house alone does nothing but a thousand houses together is basically a power plant.

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