(RICHLAND, WA) – Energy Northwest, its public utility
partners, City of Richland, Cowlitz County Public Utility District, Pend
Oreille County PUD together with the Bonneville Power Administration,
successfully concluded an aggregated demand response demonstration project.
“The success of this pilot demonstrates the reliability and
potential value of demand response to the region and our public power members,”
said EN CEO Mark Reddemann. “This technology furthers our mission to provide
regional ratepayers responsible energy solutions.”
Conceptually, demand response builds on the idea that while
individual electrical loads are relatively small compared to the scale of a
regional transmission grid, the coordinated decrease or increase of many loads
at once may serve as a cost-effective alternative to building or purchasing the
output of additional electric generating stations or transmission
infrastructure, resulting in overall cost savings for Northwest ratepayers.
During the trial project, participants successfully reduced energy usage in
nearly 80 separate events.
For BPA, growing demands on the federal hydropower system,
along with the increase of wind and other intermittent renewable generation in
the region, has increased demand on BPA’s finite ability to provide balancing
reserves to meet industry reliability standards.
“This was a groundbreaking project for demand response as a
flexible, reliable resource that can support the federal power system,"
said Mark Gendron, BPA’s senior vice president for Power Services. “Energy
Northwest has been a tremendous partner and its infrastructure as a DR
aggregator has proven out.”
This month, the Peak Load Management Alliance, a national
community of experts and practitioners who advance demand response, recognized
the demonstration project as one of the nation’s best demand response programs,
initiatives and achievements from 2015.
BPA and EN placed a pilot-scale 18-megawatt demand response
resource in service last February. Pend Oreille County PUD and its customer
Ponderay Newsprint Company joined in April, bringing the resource to its
fully-subscribed 35-megawatt capacity.
During each test event, BPA, using AutoGrid’s Demand
Response Optimization and Management System platform, sent a signal to EN’s
Demand Response Aggregated Control System, which forwarded the signal to
participants, such as Cowlitz County PUD, which serves North Pacific Paper
Corporation, a large pulp and paper manufacturing facility in Longview, Wash.
After receiving the signal, each participant reduced
electric power usage. To be considered a successful event, the load change had
to be completed within 10 minutes and sustained for a given period of time.
EN’s aggregated control system collected detailed metering information from
each asset and reported total capacity response, or electricity use reduction,
to BPA. At the end of an event, DRACS sent a terminating signal for the asset
to resume normal operations. DRACS is hosted within Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory’s Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center, a U.S. Department of
Energy-funded incubator facility built and operated for such roles.
Energy Northwest and its public utility partners continue to
look for diverse electric loads from customers willing and able to reduce their
electric demand on short notice. The participating public utilities that
provide the customer loads for ongoing demand response resources are expected
to include utility participants in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
Energy Northwest and BPA will continue to evaluate the
results from this project and, potentially, identify opportunities for further
use of the pilot resources.
