An invitation to review our draft Demand Response methods

A few weeks ago, we released our draft electrification methods and received tremendous feedback from you all and others in the community helping us to clarify our thinking and improve our explanations. We’ll be posting a final version to our website soon. Thank you to everyone who reviewed.

Next, we’d like to invite you to take a similar look at our Demand Response methods. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TlGgYeL9GZQb9WdNWGY997-dTlal6nBTUBQrrLZW93k/edit?usp=sharing

We’ve written these methods specifically for the use case of episodic demand response, where savings are calculated against a forecasted short term baseline. You could imagine buildings participating in Demand Response events on a monthly basis would likely be candidates for this type of intervention. As such, interventions like daily load shifting would not be covered by this methodology.

However, one reason why this methodology is important is that episodic demand response captures the long tail of demand flexibility, where the particular control technology is less important than the reduction that is observed in the building. Demand Response aggregators like Leap can deliver megawatts of load relief by tapping into these resources on a periodic basis, without adversely impacting the occupants of the buildings.

Combining the EACs earned through these events with the energy value paid by the grid allows these distributed resources to become more cost competitive with fossil fuel peaker plants. Instead of waiting for emergency conditions to participate in the energy markets, Leap and other Demand Response aggregators that work with WattCarbon can now activate these resources for routine load reductions that drive more energy use to the cleanest times of day.

These methods are some of the most technically complex, so we want to get them out first, but we will soon follow with methods specifications for directly metered resources, like solar panels and batteries, as well as for daily load shifting for which a different type of baseline is required. Please feel free to ask questions or add comments in the document.