With southern California utilities anticipating up to 14 days of forced blackouts this summer because of the Aliso Canyon natural gas disaster, Greentech Media is pointing to opportunities to reduce the risk through energy efficiency and demand response.
“While some news stories about the potential for outages invoke the blackouts of the energy crisis more than a decade ago, they downplay the opportunity for increased conservation and coordination that are possible due to technology advances that were not readily available” in that era, Greentech reports.
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An action plan published by the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Independent System Operator, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) includes “a laundry list of demand response and efficiency measures for mitigation, which are arguably the cheapest and easiest to implement, given that most are simply expansions of existing programs,” Greentech notes. But at least one news interview suggests utilities might see demand response as a tricky business. “Can you tell me when Mrs. Smith is going to flip on her dishwasher?” LADWP General Manager Marcie Edwards asked the Los Angeles Times.
“The answer is that the air conditioner matters far more than the dishwasher; and yes, to some extent, you can predict when users will turn on particular appliances,” writes Greentech’s Katherine Tweed. “There are dozens of companies dedicated to data analytics for both commercial and residential energy use that have developed sophisticated modeling.”
