Demand response OK, what is demand response? The idea is, during times of high electricity use and grid congestion, you can pay people (or businesses) a little to reduce their consumption. If you get enough people to agree to this and develop a way to coordinate their reductions, you can reliably produce negawatts, i.e., canceled electricity demand. The companies that organize a bunch of people to do this are called aggregators. Now, negawatts are pretty great, generally speaking. The cleanest electricity is the electricity that never has to be generated. But reliable, responsive negawatts are even better, especially for the electricity grid. They can reduce demand precisely during those periods when it usually spikes (usually in the afternoon, especially on hot summer days, or in the evening when people are arriving home from work, cooking dinner, starting the laundry). Power for those daily peaks in demand is supplied by “peaker plants,” usually natural gas turbines, which produce the most expensive power on the market. By reducing the size of those spikes — “peak shaving,” in the lingo — demand response can take pressure off the grid and hold down the overall price of power. grist.org/climate-energy/radical-judge-kneecaps-clean-electricity-under-cover-of-boringness/
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 09:16:25 +0000
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