Demand Management: The Invisible Energy Resource  

Posted by Big Gav in ,

Next100 has a post on "demand response" - managing customer demand in peak periods to reduce the need for costly, rarely used generation capacity and to allow greater penetration of renewable energy sources - The Invisible Energy Resource.

The media rush to highlight every major new renewable power project, but another clean energy resource gets far less attention, even though it's flexible, abundant, relatively inexpensive and valued overall at billions of dollars.

According to a recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), this unheralded resource is equal to 29,000 megawatts of capacity during periods of peak summer demand--as much as all U.S. wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass power combined.

The report calls it "an effective and efficient capacity resource, on equal footing with generation" and says it "will become a critical resource for maintaining system reliability over the next ten years."

What's not to like? Only the name: "demand response." You've gotta love the way the utility industry chose such a dull term to hide one of its hottest products.

Simply put, according to Wikipedia, "demand response (DR) refers to mechanisms to manage the demand from customers in response to supply conditions, for example, having electricity customers reduce their consumption at critical times or in response to market prices."

In most markets, matching supply and demand is no big deal. If supply exceeds demand, sellers build up inventory and sooner or later cut their prices, prompting additional demand. Sellers also regularly adjust prices based on predictable changes in customer demand--think movie matinees or off-season travel discounts.

But until recently, electric utilities had no comparable way to change prices for most customers or to store inventory (excess electricity). Utilities could mainly affect the supply side, for example by ramping up or down infrequently used gas-fired "peaking" plants.

Demand response programs now give utilities a powerful new tool for balancing supply and demand. By encouraging customers to curb demand during periods of extreme peak loads, utilities--and ultimately customers themselves--can save the considerable cost of backup generation capacity that may be needed only a few dozen hours a year.
elec_demand_graph.gif

There are other benefits of demand response. System reliability benefits because generation and transmission capacity aren't stretched to the limit. The environment benefits from fewer power plant emissions. And, last but not least, demand response programs can help utilities manage renewable resources like wind power. When the wind dies down, getting customers to reduce their load can rebalance supply and demand efficiently.

4 comments

Anonymous   says 12:02 PM

On top of employing demand management solutions, companies should also look to create more energy efficient products, and government should look to stimulate - beyond simple mandates - industry doing this. behindthegreen.org is a site sponsored by The Technology CEO Council that seeks to create a dialogue between government and industry to implement new and more effective energy saving technologies in the products used by Americans everyday.

Why not instead accept there will be demand peaks. Why not make 50% of all future heavy trucks rail locomotives all hybrid electric / diesel(or Natural Gas) electric with an ability to generate power for utilities. Such vehicles can then be paged to pullin into a utility connection point to become sources of power to handle demand peaks.

Such a 6000HP loco is effectively a 4.5MW generator. In 2009 a major city is seeking network support for a 50 to 100MW shortfall. Such peaks happens only on 30 to 60 days a year for 3 to 5 hours. By subsidising these dual purpose vehicles unilities could avoid or defer expensive utility infrastructure spend.

This not a bad investment especially if these units could be made modular. Imagine the Diesel engine or gas turbine and generator all fitted on a single rail carriage which is hooked up to a regular electric locomotive.
During a demand peak there could be a two step resonse depending on the intensity.
1. the electric locomotive switches to power from the local source. This itself lowers demand by 4.5MW.
2. In a severe demand crisis. The train is pulled into a siding and power is fed back inro the grid via the loco catenary. This provides a further 4.5MW of embedded nework demand support.

Finally after the 60 day period the diesel/gas generator carriage is a free resourse that can be rented out to projects to derive additional utility.

The actual carbon footprint of this approach could be a lot smaller than knocking down and rebuilding utility infrastructure not to speak of the massive cost.

There are interesting variations to this idea. Perhaps will write another blog...

You are relying on depleting sources of energy that create carbon dioxide emissions and other forms of pollution.

As such, this isn't a workable long term solution.

saugato mukerji   says 5:50 PM

The urban peak power demand is a very interesting problem.

The actual shortfall occurs only for 3 to 5 hrs a day on some days in peak summer due higher to air conditioning load. In a real scenario, this actual shortage is in the order of 50 to 100MW and is 0.5% to 1% of infrastucture capacity in a metroplitan area. The constraint is power line network and substation capacity to feed the power into the consuming area.

The desired solution is to avoid or defer the large expenditure and carbon footprint associated with upgrading infrastructure, if short term demand management or embeddded generation for network support can solve the problem.

My prev blog was how to address this short term power requirement by modifying existing transport infrastructure spend in rail locomotives and large trucks.

It may even be possible in the longer term to control the rising airconditioning energy demand which is about 45% to the total by a combination of gradually upgrading aircon technology, more environment friendly new building design and green building makeovers for current stock.

Its all about doing what needs to be done efficiently at the lowest possible carbon footprint. A lot of money is on offer for providing short term network support.

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