Demand Response in the U.S.

       

Further reading

• Benefits of Demand Response in Electricity Markets and Recommendations for Achieving them (pdf) (148)

Department of Energy has recently presented a report on Demand Response and Recommendations for achieving them. The report recommends states aggressive implementation of price based demand response because the present average-cost flat-rate systems do not lead to rational investments in generation, transmission and distribution. And the losers today are the customers. The benefits of a more widely used Demand Response (DR) are several:

• Financial for the participants themselves
• Market-wide financial for all customers (driving down costs and price)
• Improvements in reliability
• Market performance improvements by reduction of suppliers ability to exercise market power

The report is in itself also very useful as textbook material. Chapter 2 gives very good overviews and instructive figures to explain how different pieces function under different circumstances. Like this one.