Smart Grid/Demand Response

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For information on BPA's demand response pilot opportunities, please see the attached presentation from our Feb. 7 utility meeting.

Smart Grid uses technology to enhance power delivery and use through intelligent two-way communication. Power generators, suppliers and users are all part of the equation. Smart grid can monitor activities in real time, exchange data about supply and demand, optimize the grid and adjust power use to changing load requirements. Smart grid technology includes everything from interactive appliances in homes to substation automation and sensors on transmission lines.

Demand response can enhance economics and system reliability for BPA, our customer utilities and the region. It's defined as a change in electric usage by demand-side resources from their normal consumption patterns in response (1) to changes in the price of electricity over time, or (2) to incentive payments designed to induce lower electricity use at times of high wholesale market prices or (3) when system reliability is jeopardized.

Demand Response Fast Facts

BPA DR pilots – latest news

• BPA's DR Team has been busy, finishing four years of field tests, pilots, modeling and analysis. This phase of R&D will be completed by Sept. 2012, and additional pilots are under evaluation.
• We’ve partnered with Seattle City Light, Central Electric Coop, Kootenai Electric Coop, Orcas Power & Light, Emerald PUD, Mason County PUD 3, the City of Port Angeles, Lower Valley Energy, Forest Grove Power & Light, Columbia REA, the City of Richland, Clark Public Utilities, Cowlitz PUD, EWEB, Consumers Power, and United Electric Co Op on those tests, pilots, and R&D.
• We’ve tested commercial & public building load control, residential and commercial space heating energy storage, water heating energy storage and load control, industrial process load control and energy storage, large farm water management system load control and storage, small scale battery energy storage, load shifting using aquifer recharge opportunities, and many other research topics.
• We’ve learned DR is diverse, available in generally predictable and reliable quantities and time periods, available from many end uses, and variable in its cost.
• Together, BPA Technology Innovation and BPA Demand Response, and their utility and consultant partners, have spent ~$4.5 million on this DR research, starting in FY 2009, through FY 2012.

Smart Grid Fast Facts