The problem I was thinking about was demand harmonics.
It's not unreasonable to envision a scenario where a large number of independent devices, acting in their own self interest, end up oscillating between on and off together. E.g. by using the same logic.
It seems like you need something approaching a parallelism primative to coordinate behavior. E.g. bid two steps in advance, find out if your bid was accepted one step in advance, then act.
Or is bidding in energy markets already complex enough to avoid that outcome?
You can imagine a system where loads with the ability to vary their draw do so automatically in response to grid frequency changes, without even needing a centralized bidding system.
Frequency regulation is, however, a relatively small amount of power, and the grid itself needing to run at a particular frequency is more the result of loads that rely on the grid frequency for timing (i.e. A/C electric motors in fans).
In the future the grid frequency could be allowed to vary much more if loads become resilient to frequency variations.
The bigger (in terms of total energy) issue is shifting load to match supply, or vice versa. That can be achieved with appliances that store energy in one form or another. One of the most interesting examples of this is generating ice with wind energy at night to be used for cooling during the day.
The problem I was thinking about was demand harmonics.
It's not unreasonable to envision a scenario where a large number of independent devices, acting in their own self interest, end up oscillating between on and off together. E.g. by using the same logic.
It seems like you need something approaching a parallelism primative to coordinate behavior. E.g. bid two steps in advance, find out if your bid was accepted one step in advance, then act.
Or is bidding in energy markets already complex enough to avoid that outcome?