Fridges can be modified to nudge their internal thermostats up and down just a little in response to the main's frequency in such a way that, without ever jeopardising the temperature of your butter, they tend to take power at times that help the grid.
Our single greatest challenge is the ability to move power to markets outside North Dakota.
Energy consumption has to be managed by an intelligent grid when it comes to highly populated areas. Smart-grid technologies allow for the integration of renewable energy into the grid as well as energy from distributed sources.
To avoid a blackout, electricity generating companies must lower generation in line with low demand.
Intermittency [in availability for wind and solar] changes the economics, particularly this requirement that the power company at all times be able to require power. That's large.
In terms of the energy-banking concept, what we'd love to be able to do is to act in a way where customers could deposit excess energy when they didn't need it and withdraw it when they did need it.
Then, as the day progresses, depending on how the product is coming in - for instance, the fish man will fax us and say black bass is great - throughout the day, we'll also make judgment calls and adapt to what's available.
It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.
Surge pricing only kicks in in order to maximize the number of trips that happen and therefore reduce the number of people that are stranded.
