Just as Airbnb and Uber are pulling market share away from traditional hotels and taxi companies, demand response—using consumer incentives to better match grid electricity demand to available supply—is producing billions of dollars per year in energy efficiency savings, Greentech reports.
Despite legal snags that could cost the demand response industry billions in business per year, “the success of DR has been the success of about 12 years of cooperation between state and federal governments, and it has led to billions of dollars of savings per annum, in reducing consumers’ bills,” EnerNOC President David Brewster told St. John. While the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently lost in a court challenge to its demand response pricing order, “demand response is integral to the competitiveness of wholesale markets,” Brewster added. “I don’t see how you have a competitive market when you have a playground for generators.”
