- "Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply."
The study of how to manage energy demand through technological and behavioral changes.
Energy Demand: Understanding the basic concept of energy demand, including the different types of energy demand and factors that affect it.
Energy Efficiency: Understanding the principles and importance of energy efficiency, including measures to improve it.
Demand Response: Understanding the concept of demand response and its importance in energy management.
Energy Policy and Regulation: Understanding the various policies and regulations that govern energy use and management, including energy efficiency standards and incentives.
Smart Grids: Understanding the role of smart grids in energy management, including the technologies and systems used in their deployment.
Energy Auditing: Understanding the process of energy auditing, including the tools and techniques used to identify energy savings opportunities.
Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS): Understanding the role of building energy management systems in energy management, including the technologies and systems used in their deployment.
Dynamic Pricing: Understanding the concept of dynamic pricing and its role in energy management, including the advantages and disadvantages of various pricing models.
Energy Storage: Understanding the importance of energy storage in energy management and the different types of energy storage technologies.
Carbon Footprint and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Understanding the concept of carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on energy management, including the tools and techniques used to measure and reduce them.
Behavioral Economics: Understanding the principles of behavioral economics and how they apply to energy management, including strategies to encourage energy-efficient behavior among consumers.
Renewable Energy: Understanding the importance of renewable energy in energy management and the different types of renewable energy technologies.
Energy Security: Understanding the importance of energy security and the strategies used to ensure a reliable and secure energy supply.
Life Cycle Assessment: Understanding the principles of life cycle assessment and its role in evaluating the environmental impact of energy management strategies.
Energy Economics: Understanding the basic principles of energy economics, including supply and demand, pricing, and market structures.
Time-of-use pricing: This is a pricing mechanism that encourages consumers to shift their energy consumption to low-demand periods, such as at night or on weekends, in order to reduce peak demand on the grid during high-demand periods.
Peak-time rebates: This is an energy savings program that rewards consumers for reducing their energy usage during periods of peak demand on the grid.
Demand response: This is a program that encourages consumers to reduce their energy usage during periods of high demand on the grid, such as during heat waves or energy emergencies, in order to avoid blackouts.
Load shifting: This is a strategy that involves moving energy usage to off-peak times, such as running appliances or charging electric vehicles during overnight hours, in order to avoid peak demand times.
Energy-efficient appliances: This involves encouraging consumers to purchase more energy-efficient appliances, which reduce energy consumption and save money on energy bills.
Energy-efficient lighting: This is a strategy that involves replacing traditional light bulbs with energy-efficient, longer-lasting LED bulbs in order to reduce energy usage and save money on energy bills.
Building energy management: This involves using smart technology to manage energy consumption in buildings, such as turning off lights and reducing heating/cooling when no one is present.
Renewable energy integration: This involves encouraging consumers to use renewable energy sources such as solar panels or wind turbines in order to reduce reliance on traditional fossil fuels.
Behavioural change interventions: Such type of management can involve education campaigns and incentives to encourage individuals to adopt energy-saving behaviours, such as turning off lights when leaving a room.
Energy storage technologies: This is a strategy that involves storing energy during off-peak times for later use, such as using batteries to store excess solar energy during the day for use during the night.
- "Utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities."
- "There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together."
- "Demand response, a type of energy demand management, seeks to adjust in real-time the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply."
- "Utilities may signal demand requests to their customers in a variety of ways, including simple off-peak metering, in which power is cheaper at certain times of the day, and smart metering, in which explicit requests or changes in price can be communicated to customers."
- "The customer may adjust power demand by postponing some tasks that require large amounts of electric power or may decide to pay a higher price for their electricity. Some customers may switch part of their consumption to alternate sources, such as on-site solar panels and batteries."
- "In many respects, demand response can be put simply as a technology-enabled economic rationing system for electric power supply."
- "Voluntary rationing is accomplished by price incentives—offering lower net unit pricing in exchange for reduced power consumption in peak periods."
- "Users of electric power capacity not reducing usage (load) during peak periods will pay 'surge' unit prices, whether directly, or factored into general rates."
- "Involuntary rationing, if employed, would be accomplished via rolling blackouts during peak load periods."
- "Practically speaking, summer heat waves and winter deep freezes might be characterized by planned power outages for consumers and businesses if voluntary rationing via incentives fails to reduce load adequately to match total power supply."