What would an optimal electricity pricing scheme look like? It would probably have some way of adjusting rates on the fly…depending on the current usage. If you decide to play video games at 5:00 PM, when everyone else is coming home from work, cooking dinner, turning on the lights for the evening, you would pay more than someone who plays a video game at say 11:00 PM. In other words, at high demand hours, electricity prices would rise, at low demand hours they would fall, and the rate would adjust daily, hourly, minutely…like this:

…D.C. residents have agreed to pay rates eight times the average if they use their appliances at peak times but rates well below it at off-peak hours, as part of a pilot program starting next month…

Just as long-awaited high-occupancy toll lanes will charge drivers a fee to travel at rush hours, electricity customers will pay more when the grid is congested and less when it’s not. If the strategies succeed, customers will not only slash their bills but also reduce pollution from coal-fired generating plants.

And within a few years, energy experts predict that Washingtonians will live like the cartoon Jetsons, their homes powered by computer chips that shut down washing machines and dishwashers when electricity prices soar.

Too cool. I’m picturing little LED displays on light switches and wall plates that post the current electricity price. Then when my kids charge their cell phones, GameBoys, ipods, portable DVD players, digital cameras…they’ll at least know how much I have to pay. They won’t care, but, at least they’ll know.