...AND CHEAPER...:

An energy company in the Pacific Northwest just demonstrated that Demand Response works really really well. Although demand response is being implemented in many places, Energy Northwest in Richland, Washington launched a demand response project last Monday that worked perfectly. Energy Northwest is already a model power company, producing all of its power from non-fossil fuel - wind, solar nuclear and hydroelectric. It is a non-profit public entity that sells its power at cost.

Using something called a Demand Response Aggregated Control System (DRACS), Energy Northwest demonstrated to the regional Bonneville Power Administration that this new DRACS system could be relied upon to handle the changes in electricity demand in this new way.

Using this system, many electricity customers are aggregated into a network of users whose electricity use can be varied to adjust demand as needed, in minutes. One such user is the Northern Pacific Paper Corporation (NORPAC) in Longview, a giant consumer of electricity. NORPAC uses huge thermal mechanical pulping refiners that are driven by over three dozen 6,000-horsepower motors (see figure).

As part of this demand response project, NORPAC agreed to let Energy Northwest shut down eight of these huge motors at a moments notice to reduce electricity demand.

That's a big chunk of energy.

"Energy Northwest met a significant commitment to the region by successfully launching the demand response pilot project by the target date," said Jim Gaston, general manager of Energy Services and Development for Energy Northwest. "This was a great team effort involving partners throughout the Northwest."

Indeed, the response to take 32 MW offline was 4 minutes, well under the 10-minute window dictated by the Bonneville Power Administration. BPA, itself a federal non-profit agency, actually called the event without warning to see if they could catch Energy Northwest off-guard.

"From receipt of the event notification through termination by the DRACS, each of our demand response assets performed beyond all expectations," said John Steigers, Generation Project Developer.

This kind of broad-geographic project involves a lot of people. The City of Richland and the Cowlitz County Public Utility District signed on to let their power needs be varied as needed, and were part of this demonstration last week. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory also helped out by hosting the DRACS in its Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center, a DOE-funded incubator facility built and operated for just such an opportunity.

If we evolve our energy infrastructure as we should in the years to come, almost everyone would be involved in some way. Not just a smart grid, but a smart total system.

Then there's the batteries. Large battery storage systems are an obvious tool in this demand response toolbox, able to be kept charged until needed, and able to come online immediately to smooth out changes in demand. Energy Northwest has some big ones, 500 kW each, and the efficiency of these batteries are now up to 85% (see figure).

The plan is for dozens to hundreds of these mobile lithium-ion battery energy storage systems to be spread out across the region, all acting in concert, along with the demand response customers.

Follow @brothersjudd