A smart home market for buying and selling electricity

The customary 3-month billing cycle for utilities made sense when meter reading was done manually and electricity consumers weren't in the business of generating electricity from solar panels or supplying power from batteries.

Having to wait 3 months to be paid for electricity you supply to the electricity grid is no longer appropriate or necessary. Smart meters continuously measure power supplied from and to the grid and transmit this data at 15 minute intervals to the network provider.

"Cost-reflective pricing" - Pricing electricity to reflect short term fluctuations in supply and demand - can be most effective in influencing peak-period supply and demand when these price fluctuations are actually experienced in real time. If the averaged effect is only noticed once every 3 months in a quarterly bill for electricity, cost-reflective pricing has little or no chance to influence supply and demand decisions in the peak periods.

Though short term trading in the supply and purchase of electricity may not be for everyone, it could be available on the same basis as the stock exchange: for those who have an interest. A household or business with a large battery bank but no space for solar panels might wish to buy electricity at peak solar supply times when the price is low, then sell it back during overcast days in peak demand periods. The availability of a market to buy and sell electricity may be essential to encourage this type of entrepreneurial activity.

There are a number of Internet tools that are making it more secure and less expensive to construct such applications.

PayPal recently introduced a low-cost payment option for digital goods

PayPal recently introduced a low-cost payment option for digital goods. Though electricity is not a "digital good" it doesn't require PayPal to provide posting and delivery tracking, dispute resolution and return-to-sender processing as it does for physical products.

Using PayPal eliminates risks such as this one at mycause.com.au:

"On Tuesday July 29 2014 we discovered that there had been a data security breach in the mycause system and donor credit card data from transactions was compromised.
The theft has been carried out by a sophisticated and highly coordinated group of hackers who have managed to skim credit card data as it passed through the mycause server to the payment gateway."

Other modular components can be incorporated. For instance:

• There is no need to create user identifiers and facilities to reset forgotten passwords. Google account services take care of this functionality.
• There is no need to construct a community discussion forum facility. Disqus provides the functionality for this requirement.

Google provides free software development tools for building robust and flexible web applications. The Google App Engine software development kit (SDK) for Python is one of several powerful development tools available for the task.

There are recently devised software tools with which to dynamically reshape each web page after the web server has sent it to the client device. That is to say a web page can format itself to fill a Tablet or desktop PC screen and reshape itself to suit a mobile phone upon inspecting the screen size of the device in which it finds itself.

"Play YouTube videos on your T‑Box" is an example of a web site that takes advantage of these development tools and the available ready-built modules to supply a community discussion forum, subscriber accounts and secure payment for digital goods.

Treasury officials' blinkered view of innovation

"Australia's Economic Policy Challenges"

as seen through the eyes of

John Fraser | Secretary to the Treasury | 27 February 2015

I will spend a few minutes reflecting on the trends that we're seeing in the three drivers of long term economic growth — population, participation and productivity — and the implications for policy.

...the first key driver of economic growth in the medium term is population.

In recent years, Australia's population growth has been amongst the fastest in the developed world, driven by migration.

A growing population can be a source of dynamism for the economy.

The blinkered leading the blinkered

It provides a larger domestic market for business, increases the size of the labour force and facilitates the injection of new ideas.

But it also places additional demands on government budgets in areas such as infrastructure, health and education.
...

The Government has commissioned a number of policy reviews that will recommend ways to enhance Australia's economic prosperity.

Making the most of these reform opportunities is essential, where three areas stand out as priorities for raising Australia's productivity performance.

The first is tax reform.

Studies have consistently shown that tax reform offers one of the largest policy opportunities to increase incomes and living standards.
...
Tax reform can promote strong investment and encourage workforce participation.

Our company tax rate is high by international standards.
...
A second priority is continuing to modernise the workplace relations system.

Workplace regulation has been progressively and substantially reformed in recent decades.

A more flexible workplace relations system that supports the economy will help Australia respond to the challenge of lifting productivity growth.
...
A third priority area for structural reform is driving greater competition in goods and services markets.

Ian Harper proposes that we apply competition law and a new set of competition principles to all purchasing activities of government such as health, education and aged care.

Even small improvements here, where government has a large footprint and where Australia's population will impose greater demands on health and aged care, can deliver big benefits over time.

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Beyond the blinkered economics policy advice from Treasury - that must surely be overdue for a dose of its own advice on the value of fresh ideas inside Treasury itself - "a growing population can be a source of dynamism" - there are of course other places to look  for policy ideas for growing an economy.

Australia is the only OECD nation without a national research and innovation plan #FundOurFuture

— Sydney Uni Media (@SydneyUni_Media) October 7, 2015

For instance:

1. "The effect of our poorly planned mental health system is a massive drain on the wellbeing of people and families, and on Australia’s productivity and economic growth. The economic cost of mental ill-health is enormous. Estimates range up to $28.6 billion a year in direct and indirect costs, with lost productivity and job turnover costing a further $12 billion a year - collectively $40 billion a year or more than two per cent of GDP,” Prof. Fels said. (See National Review of Mental Health Programmes and Services Report released, 16 April 2015)
2. "The use of Information Technology in the production of goods and services has had a strong influence on productivity and economic growth in industrial and in newly industrialized countries... Information communications technology (ICT) is not only one of the fastest growing industries – directly creating millions of jobs – but it is also an important enabler of innovation and development." (See  Five ways technology can help the economy , 11 April 2013)
3. "The International Energy Agency (the IEA) believes that the world needs a clean energy revolution in order to break dependence on fossil fuels. Such a revolution would enhance global energy security, promote enduring economic growth and tackle environmental challenges such as climate change. It would break the long-standing link between economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions." (See  Clean Energy Technologies )

Checking energy use and controlling devices on the world wide web

It is now relatively easy to assemble a composite module that incorporates 4 existing electronic circuits available on eBay that use mains voltage and is packaged so that the mains voltage components just plug in and are not exposed like the 5 V dc embedded system connectors of the modules.

The four modules that I think would make a useful and safer composite module if the mains voltage connectors are separated and simplified are -

• An ACS712 current sensor module

• An ac voltage sensor module

• A zero-crossing solid state relay similar to those made by FOTEK, and

• A 5V AC-DC Power Supply Buck Converter Step Down Module similar to those sold by ICStation

The composite module could have a simple mains voltage plug and an output power socket, with no mains voltage connectors exposed such as this -

Adding a further two low-voltage modules to the composite module allows energy use of any device to be measured and logged on the world wide web and also allows control of the device to be managed automatically from anywhere on the world wide web -

• A Mini USB Nano V3.0 ATmega328P 5V 16M Micro-controller Module similar to those sold on eBay

• An ESP8266 Esp-01 Serial Port WIFI Transceiver Module similar to those sold on eBay

UPDATE 27 January 2023 - See an example of what others are doing with this approach to energy monitoring technology - Mini Smart Wi-Fi Socket with Energy Monitoring

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