The energy industry has already heralded energy storage as a potential game-changer since Tesla launched its suite of batteries in early May, but Open Energi’s director of business development David Hill told Utility Week that “inherent costs” invovled in storage means demand-response could have a greater impact.
Demand response “done well” is an “exciting alternative” to storage because it is “transformationally cheaper”, he said.
“It achieves the same impact on the system in terms of shifting peaks in a way that doesn’t impact consumers, which is essentially an alternative to storage,” he added.
And although storage has a “part to play”, there is still uncertainty about the lifespan of the products, and it’s still “very much in its early infancy”.
Open Energi has developed demand response technology which is installed in the controls of equipment such as heaters, pumps and air conditioning units, where it measures electricity consumption and monitors grid frequency. If it detects that the frequency is imbalanced, it temporarily adjusts the power consumption of the equipment up or down.
National Grid currently uses the technology to aggregate the electricity use of major energy users, helping to balance the grid and free up spare capacity in the system.
The transmission system operator’s head of commercial operations Duncan Burt described demand-side response as one of the “fastest growing and innovative areas in the energy sector”.
Last month, National Grid exclusively told Utility Week it will radically overhaul the way it balances the UK’s electricity system to rely mostly on demand-side measures by the end of the next decade, rather than using generating assets.