Dr. Conca opines that Washington State once again leads the pack into our energy future with the innovative energy efficiency concept called Demand Response. Generally, when electricity demand rises in an area, we just fire up some source like a gas plant or a coal plant, or put more water through a hydroelectric dam, to produce more electricity to meet that demand.
But what about going the other way?
When demand suddenly rises, we can turn off some of the big users that do not really need it at that particular time, and move that use to a later time when electricity demand is lower. Sounds simple. But until new technology became available, like a smarter grid and some rapid energy communication and control systems, it was not feasible since the response time has to be in minutes, not hours.
Variable generation sources such as wind and solar have increased over the past 10 years, creating a greater challenge in balancing generation to load. BPA is also required to reserve generation - sometimes as much as 800 MW more than the total output of most power plants, to deal with this variability. If instituted at a large scale, demand response could deal with that variability on its own.
In the past, BPA provided balancing services solely with capacity from its system of hydroelectric dams. But growing demands on the hydro system have limited its flexibility to provide capacity, so BPA is in need of something like demand response.
If a number of electricity users are able to respond quickly, then the potential for electricity savings is large, and we will not have to build as many new power plants, wind farms or solar arrays than we would otherwise have to build. Nor would we need as many new transmission lines or new pipelines. The savings could top $200 billion over the next 20 years if implemented across the country.
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Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-