No, do what you want, stick with giving Tesla thousands of dollars a year instead of opting into the coop that runs the simple algorithm and gives you the money.
The algorithm isn't awfully complex. If it's 6pm, and you need your car charged by 6am, and you need to be charging for 6 hours, then you just purchase the cheapest 6 energy futures for the 6 hours you know you'll need, and don't purchase the other 6.
If at any time during the night the prices of the unpurchased futures drop below that of the ones you have purchased, you can sell one and buy a different one (rescheduling the charge).
There isn't any better algorithm within those constraints. As long as the energy futures market is a fully liquid market, the price you'll get will be (on average) equal to the spot price you would have paid if you'd made the ideal scheduling decisions and bought on the spot market.
Fair point. For car charging the algorithm can be relatively simple (if suboptimal due to imperfect assumptions like "fully liquid"), but for stationary batteries + solar it gets much more complex.
I still suspect more sophisticated players will find easy ways to "game" such an algorithm (eg pre-bidding). Whenever you have a large herd of predictable sheep, it's an opportunity for a wolf.
I’m specifically saying this “energy HOA” sounds miserable/time-consuming just to run my car, and if people immediately have a negative reaction like that then the “solution” is potentially very flawed, if for no other reason than it hurts adoption. There’s no need to get so hostile over a simple critique. I also don’t think it’s reasonable to assume a “simple algorithm” will solve this.
For the record, I don’t own a Tesla and I don’t want to. I have no plans of giving Elon Musk any of my business.
I don’t know man. This sounds awful. Like an even worse HOA. Unless I’m misunderstanding your concept here.