The Demand Response and Advanced Metering (DRAM; Washington, D.C.) coalition recently urged federal and state policy-makers to empower electricity consumers with demand-response capability as part of the solution to the problems that caused the large-scale outages in the Northeast in August.

While the exact cause of the massive outage remains to be determined, it is clear that heavily loaded transmission lines and other circuits contributed; fundamentally, it is a peaking problem. Fortunately, power users, ranging from large industrial customers to households, have shown in numerous pilot programs that “demand response” pricing and technologies significantly reduce peak energy use. This not only solves the peaking problem, but also reduces the risk of brownouts and blackouts, and lowers costs, as fewer power plants and transmission lines are needed to serve peak loads.

“Congress and others need to solve the peaking problem to prevent similar large-scale outages from happening again. We urge that policy-makers take note of President Bush's call to modernize the grid and to include consumers as part of the solution. Numerous successful pilot programs have shown that energy users respond dramatically — sometimes reducing electricity consumption by 50% — when given price discounts for using less power during the 100 critical peak hours each year,” said Chris King, co-chair of the coalition and chief strategy officer of eMeter Corp.

“The FERC has said not only that demand response is important for ensuring adequacy and reliability, but that demand resources, including dynamic pricing, can be just as important as supply resources.”

Several federal policy-makers have pushed to insure the pending federal energy bill includes provisions for demand response, including tax incentives and other features to promote the adoption of advanced metering and demand response technologies and programs.
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