Get a Load of This! Monthly Digest of Insights Shared by Your Peers in the Energy Central Load Management Group –February 10, 2022

Load management encompasses the critical strategies of ensuring that power supply and demand meet cleanly at a point that doesn’t stress the grid or cause financial stress on utilities or customers, an area that will be of increasing importance with each passing year. In this monthly digest, we cover the most talked about and newsworthy articles in this space that were published on Energy Central over the past four weeks. We invite you to ‘get a load of this!’ every month and track the load management sector.

Managing Residential Light-Duty EV Charging- An Overview

Benoit Marcoux

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/em/managing-residential-light-duty-ev-charging-%E2%80%93-overview

Consumer-side load management has excited utility thought leaders for a while, but it’s still somewhat restricted in scope: smart thermostats or perhaps commercial/industrial players for more scale. The transition of nationwide vehicles from gasoline to electric vehicles, however, creates brand new and unprecedented opportunity for load management via managed EV charging. This area is still being tested out and piloted, but it’s poised to develop rapidly before you know it and so Benoit Marcoux provides a good primer for how this may look and what utilities can and should do to prepare.

How Demand Response and Flexibility Can Support Decarbonisation

Siobhan McHugh

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/cp/how-demand-response-and-flexibility-can-support-decarbonisation

The reason for demand response programs, like managed EV charging, is multiplicative, with opportunities to maximize efficiency, reduce the need to build new assets, and provide customers with more control over their impact on the grid and their bill. But one of the key motivators remains the ability for load shifting and demand flexibility to contribute to broader decarbonization goals. This article from Siobhan, the CEO of Demand Response Association of Ireland, dives into the facts behind this and highlights further why load management should be top of your organization’s priority list.

Heat Pumps in Michigan Winters

Doug Houseman

Link to original article:  https://energycentral.com/c/em/heat-pumps-michigan-winters

One of the most promising areas for further load management consideration comes from heating equipment during cold winters, and there aren’t too many colder than the ones resident expert Doug Houseman writes about at his home in Michigan. Armed with that background, Doug highlights the opportunities for heat pumps to impact load demand patterns and pushes us to think about what the implications of that may be.

Reduce the price of electricity by 15% by moving to planning on a daily average basis

Eitan Peled

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/ee/reduce-price-electricity-15-moving-planning-daily-average-basis

Lastly, the focus on load management comes because of the cost savings it can bring—both to individual customers and to grid wide services provided on average. Eitan Peled, CEO of PELOP highlights how electricity prices can drop a notable amount by planning on a daily average basis, using Israel as a key example of where this could provide wider benefits.

Thanks for reading this issue of ‘Get a Load of This!’ See you in this spot in four weeks to go over the great content that will be coming between now and then! This spot can feature the insights from you or the major stories at your organization—so don’t be shy about sharing your content on the Load Management Group today! 

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