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More about Demand Response - DR101

FACT: The power industry customers are separated into thirds - one third each Residential,
Commercial, and Industrial - although that does vary by area of the country.

DR is big business. The Demand Response Alliance is a lobbying group of over 60 companies and
organizations that monitor the legal status of laws being brought up in the House and Congress
regarding the Energy and Utility industry. Take a look at www.dram.org and you'll see many
companies that most of you have never heard of. Some pretty large and profitable. They all have
one thing in common - they concentrate on the C&I markets - that's Commercial and Industrial. A
typical customer in that market has at least one Megawatt consumption. Why are they all selling
to C&I and not doing much in R (Residential)? The answer is they're picking the low hanging fruit.
DR companies can control 100's of Megawatts with dozens of customers, whereas Negawatt will
target 1000's of customers even 100's of 1000's eventually millions of residential households.
With the Internet as a key path for the machine-to-machine nature of this communication, it's as
easy as sending an email to a group - like a spam, so to speak. Plus the wealth of data in return is
unprecedented in the scope of utility business transactions, and compiled properly by the Negawatt
server, will reveal truths and patterns of energy consumption that can further enhance future conser-
vation programs.

If you drive around the freeways of Southern California, for example, in San Bernardino County - past the cities of Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Corona - and the dozens of other suburban cities, you'll be hard-pressed not to notice the acres of sprawling roof tops. The rows and rows of track homes, the square miles of Spanish tile roofs, looking in a comical sense like an agriricultural area growing tile roofs! This is a vast wasteland of energy inefficantacy. Like a sponge oozing out water, energy is wasted easily at 20% and aggressive conservation can squeeze out a 40% reduction. Plus the residents recognize the need to change, to save energy, as costs are skyrocketing and there's no end in sight. Each home is almost certainly not minimizing their HVAC, not fully maintaining their pool filters, unaware of maintenance issues affecting their refrigeration compressors, and leaking power in unused infra-red remotes and unused chargers of cell phones and other battery products. Just think how much energy could be saved if an entire home could be "intelligently switched off " upon closing the garage door when leaving for work (leaving on the garage door opener powered up, of course) - and many systems (water heater, HVAC adjusted, convenience lighting) "powered up" just before returning home. (The owner's cell phone GPS could actually wake up the house when getting in the neighborhood). All sorts of things can be envisioned - the fact being that once the tools for such applications become available, applications beyond the imagination at this time will be revealed.

How it's done today - (just like 50 years ago) Rolling Blackouts

When peak isn't enough, the utility needs to immediately curtail demand to prevent damage to its equipment. The only alternative to such unfortunate situations is to shut off substations and black out neighborhoods. Imagine some of the Negawatt advantages --

         >Cut off HVAC in homes but leave on refrigeraters
         >Turn off pool filers and electric water heaters
         >Leave on VoIP communication systems
         >Leave on health related appliances
         >Leave on computer networks
         >Turn off signage in stores but leave on cash registers
         >Turn off 80% or 90% of interior lighting providing safety lighting only
         >Turn off street lights but leave on traffic lights
         >Leave on security systems
         >Turn off charging systems
         >Leave on elevators
         >Turn off escalators

As you can see the command and control of utility decisions can be precise and less obtrusive to daily activity.

With common sense planning, and on a varying level of priorities, the consumers of a utility can be controlled like a Marinette puppet on a string, under a sophisticated and imaginary combination of necessity, safety, and convenience. Efficient savings of power is what Negawatt is all about.