Demand Response Prepares for the 2016 Summer Season

June has been a much less newsworthy month than May was for the demand-side management industry. But it does represent the traditional start of the summer demand response (DR) season, so we’ll see what Mother Nature has in store for the weather. Will it be a busy DR season or a light one, as the last few years have been?

Drivers of DR Growth

Meanwhile, macro-level factors continue to act as both drivers and barriers for the global growth of DR. California, for example, continues to offer new opportunities for DR participation. The most recent case is the California Public Utilities Commission approving a decision that allows Southern California Edison to spend an additional $8.7 million on DR programs this summer to mitigate potential natural gas shortages stemming from the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak.

Outside of the United States, there are a number of examples of markets becoming more open and attractive for DR resources. From Canada to Europe to Asia, market structures are being reformed to allow DR to compete against generators for revenue. In Ontario, the Independent Electricity System Operator plans to launch a capacity market where DR will be able to compete with generation and other resources. Two of Europe’s largest electricity markets—France and the United Kingdom—plan to open capacity markets by 2017 that would allow DR participation. South Korea now allows DR to compete equally with generators in the electricity market.

And Barriers …

However, specific barriers to DR development still exist due to environmental and reliability concerns. The amount of DR capacity available for this summer was reduced due to the expiration of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) rules for emergency generators (EGs) for DR purposes. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned an EPA rule that allowed 100 hours of EG use for emergency DR programs. It granted the EPA a 1-year stay, which expired on May 1, 2016. The EPA has no plans to make changes to the rule, meaning that the court’s ruling will remain intact, affecting upward of 20% of DR resources in some markets.

The recent PJM capacity auction cleared less DR capacity than the previous year, mostly due to lower prices. But in the longer term, PJM is phasing out its summer DR categories in favor of annual participation requirements. Industrial customers may have fairly flat load profiles throughout the year, but many commercial customers rely on air conditioning (AC) measures to respond to DR events. On a portfolio level, it will come down to a risk/reward calculation. Residential DR that gets bid into the PJM market by utilities running their own DR programs are almost exclusively focused on summer-focused loads like AC and pool pumps. These programs offer virtually no winter DR capability and would not be eligible under the new rules unless they could combine a bid with a winter-type of resource.

All of these dynamics and more are covered in the Guidehouse Insights report, Market Data: Demand Response. I look forward to seeing anyone who will be attending the National Town Meeting on DR in Washington, D.C. in July.