DR Projects, Reports & Studies

BPA Demand Response Potential Assessment 2022-2043

This assessment produced estimates of the magnitude, timing, and costs of the achievable demand response potential in BPA’s service territory—defined as all public power load1 of the utilities with Regional Dialogue contracts with BPA and federally powered irrigation districts—over a 20-year period, from 2024 through 2043.

The 2022 Resource Program seeks to align BPA’s energy efficiency and demand response initiatives with BPA’s long-term power supply needs. Beginning with the 2018 Resource Program, BPA has assessed demand response equivalent to other available supply and demand-side resources. Available amounts of demand response are input into the Resource Program’s optimization model, which then compares and selects resources based on need, availability, and cost. This ensures that all potential demand response is included and evaluated against competing alternatives in the optimized election process.

This study builds on and replaces the previous DRPA (2019), conducted over a 30-month period, assessing the opportunities, costs, and challenges to the adoption and deployment of distributed energy resources—primarily demand response—in BPA’s firm power service areas. In addition to the 2019 DRPA, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Draft 2021 Power Plan informed this study.

Demand Response Potential Assessment 2022-2043

BPA Demand Response Potential Study-2018

In 2017, BPA contracted with Cadmus Group LLC to conduct:

1) a demand response (DR) potential assessment (megawatts of achievable potential and cost curves for 14 DR products) in BPA's public power service territory,

2) a study of barriers to DR and mitigation strategies, and

3) an elasticity study to understand how varying incentive levels paid to end-use consumers affect DR participation rates. 

This set of studies was completed in the first quarter of 2018.

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