The other day I joined the Intelligent Utility webinar entitled Demand Response: A Proven Asset to Grid Management. The three panelists were Bill Andrew, CEO of Delaware Electric Co-operative (DEC); Don Kujawski, Senior Engineer PJM; and Kathy Casas, Program Advisor of Customer Programs at SDG&E. I leaned some valuable information, as is the case with the Intelligent Utility outfit – and I always look forward to reading Phil Carson’s column – but back to the webinar.

The overarching theme of the webinar was not only that demand response is working across the board – from small residential applications as is the case in the 93% residential Delaware Co-operative to the large SDG&E commercial & industrial load curtailment applications – but year-over-year (YoY) demand response revenue growth is staggering. In PJM alone, the soaring demand response estimated revenues increased from approximately $12.5 million in 2004 to $310 million in 2009. 2010 revenues as of 7/12/2010 in PJM were approximately $220 million and Don Kujawski expects them to easily surpass 2009 revenues.

While I am usually not one to champion residential demand response – due to the relatively small loads, high capex for CSPs to implement the hardware, software and services, and the low-hanging fruit of the industry being the C&I sector, DEC is encouraging. Bill Andrew highlighted the coop’s “Beat the Peak” program, which sends a signal to the residential consumer in hopes of members turning off lights, adjusting thermostats by at least 3 degrees, delaying the use of major appliances and postponing hot water use. The main form of contact before an event is email, but DEC employs television, radio, and website messages to reach members, also. After the webinar I talked with Rob Book, Manager of government relations at DEC. He stated that DEC had goals to deploy 5,000 Cooper Industry manufactured Beat the Peak devices (that the utility helped design) to members – they have already exceeded 30,000 and plan to have 40,000 deployed by the end of 2011. Book said DEC can follow load curves when an event is called and in some cases see a partial decline in consumption, though usually a flat line is present.

Of course, this is great news for demand response in general, and I did my good deed of addressing a successful residential demand response application, but let’s get to the true needle-pusher of load management. EnerNOC’s August 27th announcement that the Boston-based curtailment service provider (CSP) dispatched its demand response network no less than 18 times – providing all three investor owned utilities (IOUs) with vital load during hot days – was echoed by Kathy Casas of SDG&E. Working with C&I customers, EnerNOC continued to make a strong case for demand response as the wholly-owned Sempra utility SDG&E had a 2010 load reduction goal of 14 MW in EnerNOC’s bilateral program, yet their total 2010 YTD load reduction is 60MW, proving demand response to be an asset to grid management.