Is energy peak shaving really useful or just a shell game?
New Hampshire Bulletin is a new reporting group in the state, featuring some very experienced former Concord Monitor reporters among the small staff. I figured it would be all-politics-all-the-time, because thats the easiest high-impact topic, but theyre also doing some excellent reporting on energy. A case in point is a story today about the mechanics of peak-shaving, or beating the peak  cutting down on usage during the highest usage hours each month, such as during a very hot afternoon, because that is used to set prices. The idea is that the grid needs to be able to handle the absolute maximum usage to prevent blackouts, so utility contributions to transmission costs should be based partly on that peak moment. Utilities urge users to reduce at these times to save money. But the story points out that this may not actually reduce transmission costs, it just shifts them to whatever utility did the worst job at peak-shaving  thats something I hadnt thought of. Read the whole story here, its very good.