Demand Response
- What is it?
Demand response is simply a temporary reduction or shift in electricity use.
It is a mechanisms to manage customer consumption of electricity in response to supply conditions. Demand response also is a component of smart energy demand, which also includes energy efficiency, home and building energy management, distributed renewable resource, and electric vehicle charging.(wikipedia).
- The Problem
From day to day, electricity consumers use a predictable minimum amount of power, called the base load. Demand for electricity is typically highest in the afternoon and early evening, as well as during the summertime when air conditioners run day and night. When many people want to use their electrical appliances at the same time it’s called peak usage time.
Until your power is knocked out, you probably don’t pay much attention to how often you turn on a light or the television or what time of day you do it. When you flip on a light switch, electricity travels in an instant to your home and the bulb glows — that’s called demand.
When millions of electricity customers all turn on their air conditioners after work, it increases the demand load on the grid. Our demand for electricity is growing and the Energy Information Administration estimates that demand will rise at least 40 percent by 2030 [source:EEI].
Demand response it is a way to decrease this problems. In broad terms, demand response programs give us — residential, commercial and industrial consumers — the ability to voluntarily trim our electricity usage at specific times of the day (such as peak hours) during high electricity prices, or during emergencies (such as preventing a blackout). (How does it work)
- Why it is important?
When demand is high and supply is short, power interruptions can sometimes be the result. Building enough power plants to satisfy every possible supply and demand scenario is one possibility, but the cost and environmental impact of that would be tremendous.
Demand response programs are designed to be both fiscally and environmentally responsible ways to respond to occasional and temporary peak demand periods. (Original Link)
Without demand response, electricity would be less reliable and more expensive.
Demand Response with EnerNOC’s Network Operations Center