this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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I had my energy company remove their LVTC smart meter this week after they started using it to shut off our condenser unit during our 100 degree days
The fact that it exists at all is bad enough, but they were doing this at a time when our AC was already malfunctioning due to low refrigerant. On the day they first shut it off, our house reached 94 degrees.
The program that the previous owner signed up for that enabled them to do this gave them a fucking two dollar a month discount.
I use a smart thermostat to optimize my home conditioning - having a second meter fucking with my schedule ends up making us all miserable. Energy providers need to stop fucking around and just build out their infrastructure to handle worst case peak loads, and enable customers to install solar to reduce peak loading to begin with.
The other thing that kills me about this is that our provider administers our city's solar electric subsidy program themselves. When i had them come out to give us a quote, they inflated their price by more than 100% because they knew what our electricity bill was. All they did was take our average monthly bill and multiplied it by the repayment period. I could have been providing them more energy to the grid at their peak load if they hadn't tried scamming me.
FUCK private energy providers.
Peak load of households is not during peak solar power generation. Households installing pv isn't a solution to what you described.
Today, you could also use a battery to buy power during mid day and use it in the evening when you need it the most.
In moderate climates in the US, peak loads are typically the hottest and sunniest hours of the day since condenser units are the most energy-hungry appliance in most homes. Clouds notwithstanding, peak solar generation would typically align (or closely align) with peak load time.
Batteries would also help a lot - they should definitely be subsidizing the installation of those as well but unfortunately they aren't yet (at least not in my state).
This is incorrect. Look up the “duck curve” or if you prefer real-world examples look at the California electricity market (CAISO) where they have an excellent “net demand curve” that illustrates the problem.
This curve has changed somewhat since this study in 2016. More efficient home insulation, remote working, and energy-efficient cooling systems have large impact in this pattern. But assuming you have a well-insulated home, setting your thermostat to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the day will shift this peak earlier and lower the peak load at sunset, when many people are returning home. More efficient heat pumps with variable pressure capabilities also helps this a lot, too.
Given just how many variables are involved, it's better to assume peak cooling load to be mid-day and work toward equalizing that curve, rather than reacting to transient patterns that are subject to changes in customer behavior. Solar installations are just one aspect of this mitigation strategy, along with energy storage, energy-efficient cooling systems, and more efficient insulation and solar heat gain mitigation strategies.
If we're discussing infrastructure improvements we might as well discuss home efficiency improvements as well.
Do you have a source for the cooling off effect of the duck curve?
Following is a 2 year old article hinting an increase in the effect https://www.powermag.com/epri-head-duck-curve-now-looks-like-a-canyon/ afaik it hasn't changed much but I'm open to news
I'm not really saying that the curve itself is changing (sorry, I was really not clear), only that those other variables reduce actual energy demand later in the day because of the efficiency gains and thermal banking that happens during the peak energy production. The overproduction during max solar hours is still a problem. Even if the utility doesn't have a way of banking the extra supply, individual customers can do it themselves at a smaller scale, even if just by over-cooling their homes to reduce their demand after sundown.
Overall, the problem of the duck curve isn't as much about maxing out the grid, it's about the utility not having instantaneous power availability when the sun suddenly goes down. For people like me who work from home and have the flexibility to keep my home cool enough to need less cooling in the evening, having solar power means I can take advantage of that free energy and bank it to reduce my demand in the evening.
I get what you were saying now, but having solar would absolutely reduce my demand during peak hours.
How tf can a meter shut of an applience? Did you also have smart breakers from them?
Anyway absolutely ridiculous
It's separate from the main meter and connected directly at the condenser unit.
It monitors power draw and acts as a relay when the provider sends a shutoff signal. The thermostat thinks the system is still going, and the fans still push air through the vents, but the coils aren't being cooled anymore so the air gets hot and musty.
Smart grids could solve some of our problems but this is obviously an abuse of technology.