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Is Demand Response Dead?

by Sergey Bakulin     on August 29, 2011         Comment on IT

I talked to hundred of Demand Response specialists at a lot of conferences this year around the world and it seems pretty interesting to see how the Demand Response market is changing.

We started with something like “Demand Response will save our planet” because it was clear, that new generation capabilities are more than limited. We moved to a set of pilots and prove of concepts, some Smart Cities have been advertised widely. In USA a number of “prove of concepts” i heard of is so big, that everyone would finally decide whether the concept worth spreading or not. But still there is no clear vision and more pilots to come. Why? The reason as I see it after a lot of conversations and projects review is not the consumer, not the education, and definitely not technology.

Let’s look at the idea – Consumers will shut down some of it’s equipment under pricing signals from utility. Well, that’s pretty much all the concept.  So, all the infrastructure – two way communication, smart meters (sic!), in-home displays, integration platforms, not to mention everything on the backend. Just to curtail the load 3 times a year. I’m not buying.

Some may think that it’s just one small case, that there are a lot of other different Smart Grid applications. But the consumer thinks this way. And he is not buying. I talked to the students, who received the letter from the University, asking to turn off the light due to Demand Response event. And I didn’t find any interest in participation “to save Utilities money”

Something have to change. In perception, in branding, in vendors’ positioning of their products.

What I see is a clear shift now from Demand Response to Demand Management. And the difference is that now no one is expected to Respond to any Demands. Now Demand should be Managed in a smooth reliable predictable way. This is the same technology, but it is devoted not just to Shave the Peak, but to flattern the curve, react to possible faults, decrease the price to all the participants. Demand Management is a way to effectively balance the load not by manipulating the Generation but.. You got this.  We will discuss the concept in more details in future posts here. But you can understand, that technically there is almost no difference – same protocols, different event sources, very different events cloud.

But we don’t use DR anymore. It’s dead. Demand Management is the new Energy world ideology.

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It is extremely sad that we have topics like that. But we have to move on and think about the results and conclusions we could make after what happened in Japan.

Japanese Nuclear Commission in 2003 has published a document in which they stated, that the risk of pollution due to accident should not exceed the extremely low probability – something like 1 per million years. But it happend and all the minds will be set now on thinking – how can we substitute nuclear energy generation with other sources. Solar energy? Coal?

And the problem is you just cannot substitute it right now. The only way is to consume less. But does this less consumption mean less lighting, less conditioning? Not necessarily, sometimes it just means – effective consumption in appropriate periods of time. And we come again to Demand Response programs. For example in Luxoft DRFusion ( http://www.luxoft.com/industries/energy/demand_response/ ) with active load control of wireless consuming devices we can setup the scenario in which all the curtailment commands are actively modified but the households, that means that all the required appliances will be working with no changes from utility site. That allows to curtail the load with minimum impact on the lifestyle. That will become extremely important in the situation of limited generation resources

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Demand Response concept

by Sergey Bakulin     on February 10, 2011         Comment on IT

Demand Response became a buzzword maybe year ago. Spending some time trying to understand, what market players mean by it, I cleared out that despite the fact, that everyone is using it with the same idea in mind (effective energy management), the concept behind the word is different in different minds.

Some people think that it is making people to consume less of electricity. other think that it is a way Utility try to save their cost, enabling customers turning off the appliances they need now. Some are talking about Electric Vehicle usage as portable batteries.

As Luxoft recently announced it’s own Demand Response Platform, let me describe what we are thinking about DR in real life.

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Demand Response as it should be

by Sergey Bakulin     on September 16, 2010         2 Comments

Successfull Demand Response program deployment doesn’t make anybody to deploy wires at home. It doesn’t rely on sophisticated and costly hardware. It is flexible – you can manage it online if it bothers you too much. It is easy to setup and easy to modify.

Demand Response systems vendors have to think about approaches that enable all these features, they need a platform. The platform is ready, it will be shown on Metering Europe 2010 in Vienna, Austria, 22-24 september on Luxoft Booth.

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Something is going to change dramatically, with open market of Demand Response providers opening. Now they can not only propose services of load shedding, but they have to compete each other, proposing best service quality, better timing and accuracy.  It is obvious, that the IT support of proxy demand resources is crucial to success. And we will see (and participate, of course) the process of creating and deploying outstanding solutions in nearest future.

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EPRI (ElectricPowerResearchInstitute) recently published a press release, stating that modern Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) like iPad® (toghther with others based on Android®, the Palm Pre®, the Zune HD® and other platforms) is predicted to be a portable minicomputers, well-suited for SmartGrid perormance monitoring, assets tracking, magnetic and electric field measurements. According to their research there is a huge field to leverage PED’s mobility and comuting power as an engineering instrument.

I personally see another way of wide iPad adoption in Smart Grid programs. As it is a “cool device”, specially crafted to bring unbelievable “touch” experience in everyday tasks, it is created for consumers, not for engineers, serving them. Yes, there are IT geeks, that have fun running Telnet on iPads, but most of the photos are of children and cats, playing with a new toy. Sooner or later,  many households will have something of the kind. That means, that the interactive, easy to use and fun to play with energy management solution is already deploying through the market.

In DRFusion Demand Response automation framework we are using IPad exactly like that – as a sophysticated In-Home display, capable of showing the homeowners their consumption levels, manage their home appliacnes and fine-tunning demand response. Only like that – handled by the consumer, this devices shows all the power it can reveal, helping utilities on the way to the Smart Grid.

And Engineers will use laptops.

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New policies of energy usage

by Sergey Bakulin     on July 28, 2010         Comment on IT

One of my friends a student of American university has received a letter, describing new policies of energy usage. The letter stated the new rules of lighting, some limitations and recommendations for students on using electricity. It was clear from the letter, that the university has signed an agreement with the utility about participating in one of the demand response programs, aimed to shave the peak. It was also clear, that the university is making all the possible to help the region to cope the load peak, slightly changing the lifestyle.

What is most interesting is the reaction of the students. Though it was clear for them that the utility and the university are trying to cut their costs, they were absolutely sure, that there were no economical benefits for them, and their own bill will not be reduced. An interesting is that none has shown the intention to participate, somehow changing their consumption patterns.

I see two conclusions here.

First, automatic demand response is the key to successful implementation of peak shaving. If there is a recommendation to turn off some of the unused or unnecessary devices , we make the consumer think about it, and make some actions, that he is not awarded for. If however, all the devices are managed remotely, the consumer have to make some actions to tune his consumption pattern,  turning on devices he needs. This, for the same reason, will lead to turning on only the minimum amount of loads, the real one he needs to.

And second, it is clear for me, being connected to the energy market, that the demand response is a must, it helps us to save tremendous amounts of money, not plugging in ineffective, costly energy sources. But many of the consumers, even young one, technology-oriented, are unaware of the reasons, processes and benefits if such programs and we still need to pay a lot of attention in educating them if we want the SmartGrid to become the part of our life.