Look into the Jevons Paradox.

It'd be interesting to look into [5] as to why this paradox would be unlikely to occur.

Regardless, even if energy becomes too cheap to meter from a production perspective, one should not forget that a big part of its cost comes from transportation of said energy. Unless we get room temperature superconductivity, i don't see a future where this cost drops to zero.

And finally, another part of the cost is taxation. Governments likely won't have an incentive to lower that part. They might proportionally just make more money~~

I don't believe we will ever have 'too cheap to meter'. Unlike internet/data, which is limited by the capacity of the link, a residential power connection can pull more 'value' via electricity vs transmitted bytes. It is difficult to run up thousands of dollars of cost on a residential internet connection, whereas if you consume a lot of energy, you could easily have an energy bill in the thousands of dollars. Electrical Energy moves a lot of value very quickly, enabling a machine to do work.

If we had a too cheap to meter situation, it would end in a tragedy of the commons where some users would consume significant power; eg: bitcoin mining.

If the long term price of Bitcoin is somehow related to the average price of energy globally, which is going to be mined for many more decades, Bitcoin makes energy un-'too cheap to meter';

With Bitcoin we mining have a strategy to convert surplus energy into digital capital. Thus it must be metered or else 100% of the "free" energy will go into Bitcoin mining, it is critical that energy has a price in order to signal resource prioritization.

Yeah, and they'll always stick us for storage bill since it's more expensive to store it than make it in a lot of areas.

People will certainly use more energy as it becomes cheaper, but not enough to stop it from becoming cheaper.

I suspect you're right. As long as we're drawing electricity from an electric grid, which obviously has to be maintained, there will be charges for usage. However, the goal is to charge customers just above their marginal cost (assuming a bunch of stuff about competitive markets).

Marginal cost might become only trivially based on usage, if energy becomes cheap enough and instead be based on the costs of maintaining the grid. That's how I could see energy becoming more of a club good, where you just pay for access to the grid (and maybe for some max usage rate).

Like everything else, energy should be getting cheaper over time, since technology is deflationary (it gets cheaper to produce everything when technology improves), if it wasn't because the fElon Mü$ks need to get richer and richer without any limitations, and for that to happen, central banks need to keep fiat inflation going.

Yes. There's wind, solar, geothermal, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric. This stuff doesn't pay for it self but it should become cheaper as it matures. There is no interest for corporations to make less money only more. Greed is too loud for altruism in this crazy world.

even if it was, the gov would find some way of bleeding people dry anyway

If energy becomes too cheap to meter, will that not end the scarcity of food, transportation, durable goods like cars, computers etc.?

After returning from Taiwan, I find US phone bills to be weird. Not only do they use unlocked phones in Taiwan, but you can get an unlimited data plan for $20. In the USA, it is so much more to get unlimited data. Makes you think how much of monopoly there is, and how much they are controlling the prices.

There are already many instances where surplus energy is stranded and there is no market for it. This is where Bitcoin mining is often viable. But even Bitcoin mining needs power to be available most of the time to justify the investment in mining rig. So still there are cases where surplus electricity is available but there's no demand for it at certain times. Hydro dams here in NZ have been overflowing lately due to heavy rain and limited demand. The same occurs with most forms of generation except that built specifically for backup when there is a supply shortfall and that is usually fossil fueled generation from gas or coal.

Power plants run regardless of whether the meter is running or not. The meter is the tool used to extract sales of the service. If I turn on every device in my house or I turn off every device in my house the power plant still runs.

They don't shut down based on the demand. They run the power plant anticipating that people will use the power and they hope that the customers will pay enough money so that the operation can continue, maintenance, fuel and alternate power generation can resume or stop for maintenance.

It is possible that the operation can provide a generic fee based on the number of service subscribers that is profitable without being expense based on kilowatt use but the same innumerate politicians who demand Fiat for projects will accuse the regulated utility of not being fair to those who use less and being too cheap for those using more.

Which superficially makes sense but the truth is that the infrastructure is built out for the large customers and the small customers benefit from that infrastructure by being proximity oriented to the large customers.

People use power because they need it. To others it may look like waste but the needs are based on what the people want. Let's say a furniture showroom on the side of the highway. Only a skeleton crew is on site and no customers. Every light is on that can be lit. Why?

The displays have to be assembled and dismantled. The place needs to be cleaned. Retail stores require this in order to not disrupt the day sales operations. This principle of energy use is not arbitrary but necessary for smooth operation.

This same principal goes for power plants and manufacturing. A shut down is a big deal and it's only needed when the operation must upgrade and replace equipment that is constantly in demand. It's an expensive process and should only be done when they're is a safety concern or a planned operation.

There is no energy scarcity there is only monetary devaluation by entities that watch the price of things and they introduce fresh money that has never circulated in order to confiscate market goods and services without working for them. This is called "front-running price discovery". This activity creates inflation and scarcity of energy, goods and labor.

If there is no denominator in the supply of money then everything else purchased will be scarce because after an initial fresh injection of money all producers will need to find resources to replace the supply that was purchased by a new customer who did not work for the new money.

This creates a scarcity because all the work involved to make everything needs to happen in order to continue operations. With inflation factored in this does not seem to be a problem but information is arbitrary and it always increases and compounds. Prices go up and the rich customers continue the demand while the poor customers lose more resources and eventually leave the economy unless they are subsidized which leads to artificial low prices and poor quality of life, goods and services.

i believe that energy will not be cheap to measure, since all forms of energy require investment and at the end of the day there are more and more users, companies and connected equipment that require energy for their use, almost everything is connected to that network, social life is currently supported by energy, therefore it will always have to give a commission for it. comparing internet data is smart and can in my case give me an idea of how important it is, since servers and internet services need energy to function and it must be paid or fed back. energy in any form will always ask for a payment no matter how low it is. to some extent the primary source will get its interest. thanks for sharing and sats to all.

You gave an example of internet. Is internet an energy? Or you just compared it?

The concept of "too cheap to meter" energy represents a dangerous misunderstanding of fundamental physical and economic principles. The universe runs on entropy, and someone's always paying the thermodynamic bill.

Jevons paradox

Seems unlikely.

I would love to see this, but I imagine that energy companies would simply new and creative ways to extract money out of consumers.