Demand response: Utilities share their programs (and challenges)

Smart Grid News
Sep 21, 2020

New York's Consolidated Edison operates in a complicated market. As Con Edison's section manager for commercial customer solutions Col Smart explains it, the company is a transmission and distribution company that doesn't own any generation facilities – so it has a more than healthy reliance on demand response programs to help it manage its transmission and distribution operations and ensure they are as effective as possible.

Smart's comments came from an interview with the Association for Demand Response & Smart Grid (ADS) which just released an initial case study on demand response based on interviews with executives from four utilities: Con Edison, Progress Energy Carolinas, Gulf Power and Reliant Energy.

It's a good cross section because the operations and challenges of those utilities are at least a little different and in some instances very different. For instance, while Con Edison manages transmission and distribution but owns no generation, Reliant is a part of NRG Energy, one of the country's biggest power producers.

And, of course, they're all involved in demand response. The case study interviews are the first in a planned series and provide an opportunity to hear first-hand from company executives about their programs, challenges, lessons learned and best practices.

Dan Delurey, executive director of ADS and the case study interviewer, said "ADS is continually told by members of the DR and smart grid community that they want to hear about 'lessons learned' from others who are doing similar work to what they are doing. The new ADS Case Study Interview Series is focused on filling that expressed need. In the interviews, ADS goes behind the scenes to let people 'tell the story' of the program. It lets them talk about how the program came about, how they designed it, how they market it – and most importantly – what worked and what didn't work."

The case study series is part of an ADS effort to implement the National Action Plan on Demand Response issued by FERC and DOE. DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability is providing support for the series.

The case study interviews are available on the ADS Web site as a webcast and as downloads of the written transcripts. PowerPoint slides used in the interviews are also available on the site.

http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Technologies_Demand_Response/Demand-response-utilities-share-their-programs-and-challenges-5131.html#.UGNUvlEy0fV