Why should electricity be cheaper to buy at night? How does make sense? Please help!?

Question

I searched everywhere but only got confirmation that one can get night tarifs e.g. for Storage Heaters, but there is no explaination why electricity becomes cheaper at night.

Answer 1

Maybe because it is less in demand at night as there will be less people using it as they are asleep? Hence it is deemed an off peak time? Only a guess.

Answer 2

Its to try and balance out electricity demand. By encouraging people to use electricity at night for certain uses, eg. storage heating, washing machines and driers, lessens the demand during the day. The power companies encourage this by offering lower prices at night. In the UK its called Economy 7 and as the name suggests is available for 7 hours usually between 12 midnight and 7 in the morning. A special 2 rate meter is installed in the customers premises.

Answer 3

There is certainly less demand for electricity at night but that is only half the answer. The reason it is cheaper at night is to do with the running of the power stations- it is cheaper for them if they can keep running rather than having to keep stopping at night and start again every morning. The newer gas-powered stations can do this easily enough but are the most expensive to run.

The older nuclear power stations are the cheapest to run and are online continually, supplying what is termed base-load. They supply most of the night-time electricity and so determine your price.

Answer 4

Even when some generating plant is shut down there is still be a lot of excess energy to be used, so to balance the loading out it is offered at a reduced price.

Some hydro stations, notably Loch Awe in Scotland (Cruachan) use water to generate power during the daytime and then use the excess of unused power to pump the same water back up to the loch overnight, for use again the next day. Otherwise the loch would soon be empty!! This is called 'Pumped storage' the turbines are reversible to accomplish this. None of this is visible but contained in an enormous cavern in the mountain!

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/CruachanPowerStation

Answer 5

IF that is even true, then it is probably due to there being less demand for it at night time. Its the same reason cell phone companies give free nights and weekends... less calls occur during those times. Less stress on the system allows them to lower costs so people would use more (and therefore have to pay for more)...

Answer 6

I hear that it is as I've heard of people using their washing machine or dish washer very late at night because the electricity is cheaper. Perhaps there is less drain from the nation grid than at peak times.

Answer 7

Not as much demand at night, if you think of all the factories, shops etc that not using at night, plus residential. means power stations not outputing as much so cheaper.

Answer 8

The demand is less at night, so, the rates are lower.