Energy demand fluctuates throughout the day which impacts energy prices and costs you money, utilities must always have enough energy supply to accommodate consumer energy demand.
Now imagine a really hot day when everyone turns their A. C.
At the same time energy demand spikes, the grid gets stressed and electricity prices go up when demand is high and supply is low utilities must find a way to respond and restore the balance.
Option one: The utility can fire up a peaker plant.
This is extremely costly and emits an enormous amount of Carbon.
Option two: The utility can buy electricity from another state.
This is also costly and might not always be available.
Option three: The utility can use renewable energy sources such as solar but they aren’t always available during high demand times.
Option four: The utility can work directly with their customers through demand response events. Sounds great. Right?
So demand response or D. R. is the ability to reduce energy consumption during periods of high demand for incentive demand response programs are offered by utilities to engage customers in supporting grid operation during extreme times.
The concept is that a collaborative, small decrease in energy load across many participating buildings provides a large reliable reduction impact reducing stress and stabilizing costs.
There are two types of D. R.
Manual D. R. involves someone from your team physically turning off pieces of equipment during an event. Not ideal.
Automated D. R. is an end-to-end process managed by an aggregator that uses smart technology to manage electricity for you when an event is called, this means no action is needed from the energy user and there is no interruption to business operations.
Let’s dive a little deeper into how automated demand response works, aggregators like grid point work with customers to enroll them and establish a strategy that fits their business.
When the utility realizes demand is approaching maximum capacity, they call for a D. R. Event.
Then aggregators use technology to execute the reduction strategy and after the event is over, the schedule automatically goes back to normal and the utility will pay the customer for contributing Participating in D. R. is a hands-off simple way for businesses to save energy and money while supporting their local utility.