> Seems to me that as the energy mix moves more towards renewable, to the extent that the renewable-skeptics’ prediction that variability is an issue comes true, then we would have to build gas peaker plants and start charging more for electricity at peak times.
There are a lot of different types of variability. You're talking about sudden short-term variance in supply, which is easy to deal with- just build more renewables. Bad weather doesn't cover up entire states except for extreme events, and you can just turn it off when it isn't needed. You can build a lot of overcapacity if the alternative is to pay peaker plant rates.
Increased variance like I interpret most people talking about it is those extreme weather events not necessarily hurricanes, but things like a week of no wind or heavy clouds happening to cover every panel in a distribution area. The fear being that you would still need gas plants or huge batteries to run for that one week a year, at extreme cost. The variance averages out most of the time, but not all the time.
Virtual batteries work with the former, but not the latter.
> In response to this increased market rate delta it would become more viable to invest in dynamic pricing and load shedding/deferring tech.
It's definitely not a tech problem. It's an incentives problem. The tech was always incredibly simple, and it does literally exist already- you can buy internet-connected thermostats. All you need to do is connect Nest to your local electricity distribution company and tell it how many degrees colder/warmer you will tolerate per $ saved. 45% of a house's energy use is in controlling the temperature of air and water (and that's not counting the fridge, which is another 7%).
It's as much on the suppliers as it is on consumers, IMO. Electrical distributors are some of the laziest, worst-run companies in the country. Half of them can't even do billing right; I know dozens of people who have been double charged or never charged or charged for their neighbor- nobody wants to read their electrical bill, so nobody cares. The average US household spends ~$2450 on electricity annually, and the amount you can save for how complicated it is is just below that mental threshold.
I don't see it getting better without legislation. Most obviously, a push for subsidized smart meters that don't use 1930s tech to measure electricity. Then a standardized (extensible) API and/or reporting requirement, so that devices can know the current price of electricity. A standard for transmitting that info over the house circuits themselves, if you're feeling fancy. Direct-to-consumer subsidies from grid authorities for things like ancillary services, power factor correction, and frequency stabilization.