According to the California Public Utilities Commission demand response is a resource that allows end-use electric customers to reduce their electricity usage in a given time period, or shift that usage to another time period, in response to a price signal, a financial incentive, an environmental condition or a reliability signal. Demand response saves ratepayers money by lowering peak time energy usage, which are high-priced. This lowers the price of wholesale energy, and in turn, retail rates. Demand response may also prevent rolling blackouts by offsetting the need for more electricity generation and can mitigate generator market power.
Currently, demand response programs are administered by California’s three regulated investor-owned utilities: PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E. Most of the utility demand response programs target large commercial and industrial customers that are equipped with meters that are capable of measuring and reporting energy usage in one hour intervals or less.
Today, demand response programs show extreme benefits and even become a necessity for others. According to PG&E occasional storms and heat waves, as well as periodic power plant repairs and maintenance, have the potential to affect California’s supply and demand for electricity. 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. The programs offer incentives to businesses that volunteer and participate by temporarily reducing their electricity use when demand could outpace supply.
Demand response is relatively new, and like our developing sciences and innovations, it is important that all the steps taken towards its success are studied and analyzed. In order to make the data official and move on to further research and answers, The Demand Respond Research Center was created.
The DRRC was established in spring 2004 by the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy research (PIER) program to conduct research that advances the near-term adoption of demand response (DR) technologies, policies, programs, strategies and practices.
The main objective of the Center is to develop, prioritize, conduct, and disseminate multi-institutional research that develops broad knowledge to facilitate DR.
The Center’s research agenda is crosscutting, practical, and relevant, with a goal of fostering an understanding of the complex factors that influence “what works.” The Center research agenda covers three major DR research categories: Energy Systems Integration, Communications, and Grid Integration; Residential and Commercial Buildings; and Industrial, Agricultural and Water.
In order to achieve this, the center consists of specific methods such as Multi-institutional partnerships, connections with stakeholders, long-term attention to DR Research, development, demonstrations, and technology transfer.
One of the major accomplishments of the DRRC is the development and commercialization of the Open Automated Demand Response Communications technology. This effort began as a research concept and is now widely used throughout California and other locations. It is being formalized through the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Standards efforts and is on its way to becoming a national and international standard.
The Demand response technology can be illustrated through what is called as SMART GRID, the following is an example:
A smart grid is a digitally enabled electrical grid that gathers, distributes, and acts on information about the behavior of all participants (suppliers and consumers) in order to improve the efficiency, importance, reliability, economics, and sustainability of electricity services.
For more information on SMART GRIDS you can check out the fact sheets and videos at http://www.eesi.org/smart-grid-how-does-it-work-and-why-do-we-need-it-08-jan-2009
REFERENCES:
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Demand+Response/
http://drrc.lbl.gov/about
http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/demandresponse/whatisdemandresponse/
http://pjm.com/markets-and-operations/demand-response.aspx
ROBOTICS ACTIVITY
Our class experiment consisted of a lego mind storms activity, in pairs, we were responsible for building a Basic 2-Motor NXT car to measure velocity, distance and acceleration. After encountering a couple of difficulties in finding parts and following the instructions given by our Professor, Livia and I finally completed our lego car and were able to move on to the next step of the process, and a very scary one might I add, connecting it to the computer and opening up the NXT Robotics Software.
This is what our robot looked like…
Next, we plugged it into the computer and began working with the program. Up on the screen we had to work with two grids (the following picture will show this); where we were able to design the movements and speed we desired our robot to make. With the software, our first task was to program the robot to do a complete 360-degree with a two foot diameter circle.
We were then told to experiment with the distance the robot was capable of traveling in one second (inserting this into the program was a little difficult and we had to ask for help). We pressed the button for it to move and once it was finished we used a ruler to measure its distance. To reach our conclusions we used a couple of formulas and come calculations.