Demand Response

What is Demand Response?

It is a hot summer day. Coming home from a demanding track meet you simply cannot wait to feel the cool air conditioner blow ice cold air into your face. When you turn on an air conditioner you expect immediate results. You do not turn it on and wait a few minutes for it to start working. Electricity comes from a power plant and transmitted to local substations where it gets transformed into usable voltage. Then it is distributed to the places that need it in that area, this is handled by the power grid. Everyday electricity consumers predict the minimum amount of electricity that is going to be used that day, this amount is called the baseload. The grid needs to take care of this energy production and also spikes that may happen. The demand for electricity is usually the highest in the afternoon and early evening, and also during the summer time when people run their air conditioners all day and all night. The common time for people to use their electrical appliances is called the peak useage time.

Normally people probably don’t appreciate electricity as much as they should until a power outage occurs. That is when they finally realize how much they use electricity. When you turn something on electricity immediately flows into your house and turns the object on, that is called demand. When all of the electricity customers turn something on after work it is called the demand load.

We use a lot of electricity everyday, it only makes it right to think about how to conserve energy. One way to lower the demand load is a concept called demand response. In more detail demand response makes it so that us customers can trim our electricity usage at specific times of the day.

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Types of Demand Response:

Emergency Demand Response:

When electricity demands peaks because of unusually hot or cold weather there might not be enough electricity to supply all of the demands. In order to avoid a power outage electric utilities call upon their emergency demand response programs. California for example have their program where large commercial and industrial customers reduce their electric load to a previously agreed upon level during emergencies. Although these things don’t happen often it sure has helped them avoid some costly outages.

Economic Demand Response:

The cost to acquire supplies increase as the demand for electricity increases. When the demand for electricity is low the supply comes from inexpensive base load generation for example, coal or nuclear power. However, when the demand for electricity is high the base load generation is exhausted and the supply comes from expensive peak load generators. Even though residents pay a flat rate for electricity, the prices constantly change throughout the year.

Electricity is more reliable with emergency demand response, and less expensive with economic demand response. Anything with more reliability with demand response and is less expensive will certainly gain popularity.