Smart buildings as an integrated grid resource: an assessment of program viability

Panel: 1. Foundations of future energy policy

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Stuart Schare, Navigant Consulting, USA
Angie Eide, Hawaiian Electric Company, USA

Abstract

Over the past decade EU and national policies have dramatically increased the share of electric power coming from renewable sources. In some markets, there is so much renewable energy on the grid that wholesale prices periodically go negative, forcing generators to pay grid operators to take their electricity. Furthermore, the inherent intermittency of these resources has led European utilities to “worry that the growth of solar and wind power is destabilising the grid, and may lead to blackouts or brownouts (Economist, 12 October 2013).

The industry is increasingly looking to demand response (DR) resources to integrate the growing amount of intermittent renewables by bridging the gap between the sudden loss of renewable power and the start of combustion turbines or other supply-side resources. The Fast DR pilot program at Hawaiian Electric provides incentives to and enables more than two dozen commercial customers to reduce load (at least 50 kW) automatically (Auto DR) when requested by the utility. Up to 80 Fast DR events may be initiated per year, each dispatchable immediately and lasting up to one hour. This paper will present new, unpublished findings and implications from the pilot, which concludes in December 2014, including:

– RESPONSIVENESS OF “SMART” BUILDINGS as part of the energy system, addressing the average kW reduction per customer, the consistency of reductions over dozens of events, and the speed with which the reductions occur.

– VALIDITY OF A FULL-SCALE PROGRAM, as assessed using a structured scoring framework addressing market adoption, technology readiness, operational experience, and cost-effectiveness.

As electric systems in Europe increase their reliance on intermittent renewables, it will become harder to maintain stability of the electric grid without construction of (mostly redundant) generation capacity that could make additional renewables too expensive to pursue. The Fast DR pilot is providing much needed insight into whether, and how, DR resources can be used to maintain system stability in utility environments with increasing penetrations of renewable resources—whether small island systems or interconnected European markets.