tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653076503390223739.post8588263169816577464..comments2024-01-14T22:20:03.303-08:00Comments on Dave Toke's green energy blog: Will Miliband's price freeze backfire?Dr David Tokehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00320320595200443205noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653076503390223739.post-91280919612068748952014-02-19T09:09:50.958-08:002014-02-19T09:09:50.958-08:00David,
I agree with your post, and the trouble is ...David,<br />I agree with your post, and the trouble is deeper than lack of competition, but lies in the accounting. The scarcity of electricity, and thus its intrinsic value, can vary within minutes or seconds. So accounting has to be done concerning very short periods, perhaps as short as once every 10 seconds or so. Such metering and related settlement is feasible at wholesale, such as the electricity of a city, region, town or perhaps village. It is not feasible at a retail level, at least not without intrusion into households similar to that of GCHQ (and NSA) of our telephone calls, and vastly expense.<br />The electricity distribution system is fundamentally shared - a communal resource. The attempt to divy it up so that competing corporations can account for "their" customers creates many perverse incentives that gets in the way of "renewable friendly" consumer behaviour. We need a governance structure that is more "community regarding", and so to move beyond the simplistic notion that competition is the only route to efficiency. We do not need yet more corporate monitoring of our daily lives. David Hirsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379065568697840798noreply@blogger.com