PJM’s Latest Capacity Auction Shows Drop in Demand Response, but Not Catastrophic

The holding of breath for PJM’s annual capacity auction results ended on May 23, with the results indicating mixed feelings. The price for most of the market was down from $100/MW/day for the 2019-2020 auction last year to $76.53/MW/day for 2020-2021. However, certain subzones cleared at nearly twice that price or more, so bidders in Chicago, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Cincinnati came out smiling.

For demand response (DR), there was a lot of speculation going into the auction about the effect that the first 100% Capacity Performance procurement would have. Some analysts predicted 50% or greater reductions in DR participation, assuming most DR providers and customers would not want to take on annual performance risk. In my Market Data: Demand Response report for Guidehouse Insights last year, I estimated a 25%-30% reduction, feeling that large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers would continue to participate; DR providers would continue to aggregate midsize C&I customers with more conservative megawatt values; and residential DR would take the biggest hit since it is almost all summer based.

Pricing, Aggregation Rules Influence Auction

The actual reduction was 24% from the last auction, dropping from 10,348 MW to 7,820 MW. Nothing to sneeze at, but far from a total market abandonment. Last year, only 614 MW of DR cleared as an annual product, so there was a large portion that was willing to convert. Pricing may have influenced DR quantities as well. While all zones decreased year-over-year, the zones with the lowest prices showed the biggest drops and those with higher than expected prices shed fewer megawatts.

This was also the first auction in which PJM instituted new aggregation rules, where summer and winter resources could match up with each other to meet the annual obligation. While 2,000 MW of summer resources (mostly DR, energy efficiency, and solar PV) submitted aggregation bids, only 485 MW of winter resources bid (mostly wind), limiting the effects of the new mechanism.

Silver Linings

Historically, EnerNOC has happily proclaimed its percent procurement of PJM DR in the auctions, but has been quiet the last couple of years. However, this year EnerNOC tweeted: “@EnerNOC captures 34% of the DR market in #PJM BRA.”

On the residential DR side, it appears that the Exelon utilities—which have been the biggest bidders in that sector—largely pulled out of the auction from the supply side. The utilities had put out an RFP in March looking for 700 MW of winter resources with which to aggregate, but apparently did not find enough partners. However, this does not mean that they exited the capacity market entirely. PJM reported that, for the first time, price-responsive demand resources cleared in the auction to the tune of 558 MW, mostly in the Baltimore Gas and Electric and Pepco regions—likely from those host utilities. If those megawatts get added to the DR megawatts that cleared in the auction, the drop is only 19% from last year.

All in all, I’d consider this a positive outcome for DR compared to some of the draconian forecasts. Now we’ll have to see how well the market performs once the annual requirement kicks in.